Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights
Police arrested the man they say provided the gun that killed one person and injure several others at an off-campus party attended by students from Seton Hall University in New Jersey.
Marcus Bascus, who was arrested 75 miles away from the scene of the murder in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., lives a block away from where the shooting occurred.
Bascus, like alleged shooter Nicholas Welch (pictured above), 25, faces murder, conspiracy, attempted murder and weapons charges.
Welch, who was arrested earlier this week, has proclaimed his innocence. He pleaded not guilty. He also agreed to submit to a DNA test. His lawyer asked that he remain in protective custody at the Essex County jail.
Killed in the shooting was 19-year-old Seton Hall honor student Jessica Moore. Police say Moore sustained a bullet to the head as she was tending to a friend who had been shot in the jaw.
The shooting happened after Welch was turned away from an off-campus house party, because bouncers thought he looked like a troublemaker. It's such a ridiculous reason to shoot anyone that I cringed even as I typed the sentence.
A Seton Hall student says he saw the gunman outside of the home as he was waiting to pick up two friends. The student said he saw a man walk away from the house toward another on a curb. One man said: "Give me the burner," which is common slang for a gun. After his two friends got in the car and he drove away, the student said he heard gunshots in the distance.
Gerald Saluti, Welch's attorney, said his client was "still in shock over the whole thing."
It's the community that should be in shock.
The fact that one young man would hand over a gun to another young man without any concern as to what he's going to do with that weapon is shocking. It's like the blind leading the blind. Essex County prosecutor Robert Laurino says Welch allegedly emptied his revolver of all five bullets. That's a shocking disrespect for life.
I might think that even a thug would have enough manhood to discourage someone from blindly shooting at people who did nothing to him, but I'm wrong. Instead, manhood is described as blind rage and the willingness to commit reckless acts in retribution for the slightest disrespect. That's shocking.
It's also shocking that black parents who raise their children right and send them off to college on the path to a decent life still have to plan funerals for their children.
One of the saddest parts about this is that Welch is a father of two. The mother of his children called him a "family guy" who "wouldn't do anything like this." If he is convicted of these charges, it, unfortunately, increases the chances that his kids will end up in prison as well someday.
There are more than 1.7 million kids with parents in prison. One in 15 black children and 1 in 42 Latino children has an incarcerated parent, compared with 1 in 111 white children, according to the Sentencing Project.
It's shocking that these figures have not shocked us into finding better solutions other than violence.