NEWARK N.J.
The four college-age friends who were hanging out in a schoolyard late on a Saturday night were the type of children who make hometowns proud, especially hard-luck hometowns like this one.
They had passions notably for music, which had brought most of them together. And they had ambitions: One of them was already an ordained minister, another about to be promoted in her job at a nursing home.
By almost any measure they were success stories. Three of them were home from Delaware State University, and another was set to enroll this fall.
But over several horrifying minutes, in the schoolyard of an elementary school, the four friends their names were Natasha and Terrance Aeriel, Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey became something else entirely.
Three of them Harvey and Hightower, both 20, and Terrance Aeriel, 18 were forced to kneel in front of a wall and shot to death at close range. Natasha, Terrance’s sister, was shot in the head and survived.
The three who died became murder victims Nos. 57, 58 and 59 of this year in Newark, which, despite the efforts of a charismatic mayor who won office last year promising to hoist the city out of a cauldron of crime, cannot seem to shake the violence.
