The Trenton Times published the following article reporting the second homicide of the year.
Trenton police confirm year’s second homicide with shooting death of 35-year-old city man
By Alex Zdan/The Times
on January 21, 2013 at 9:13 PM, updated January 21, 2013 at 9:15 PM
TRENTON – A 35-year-old city man was gunned down in broad daylight yesterday afternoon outside an apartment complex, becoming the city’s second homicide in 2013.
Mortally wounded, Andre Corbett collapsed on the concrete doorstep of a housing project building near the corner of Hoffman Avenue and Oakland Street in the city’s West Ward. Emergency responders pronounced him dead at the scene, and as police began their investigation his body remained, covered with a white sheet.
Corbett’s mother arrived less than an hour after the killing, her face and small frame bent by sorrow.
“Oh, my baby!” she yelled, sobbing and held up by family members as she cried openly on the street.
Police last night released few details on the killing of Corbett. They said officers were sent out to 194 Oakland Street, the apartment building’s address, at 2:43 p.m. on a report that a man had been shot. The New Jersey State Police also responded to the initial call, assisting city police for a short while before leaving the scene.
Evidence was recovered and a K-9 searched the area around the courtyard bound by a wrought-iron fence, but police would not specify what they had found.
There were no early indicators of a motive for the shooting, and police were not releasing information on possible suspects or a suspect, said Lt. Steve Varn, head of the department’s detective bureau.
The Hoffman and Oakland corner has seen several shootings over the past month: one on Dec. 30 that left three people wounded and another on New Year’s Eve where a man was shot in the leg. Police could not say whether they thought those crimes were related to Corbett’s slaying, though Varn said a shooting that left a man wounded in the leg Sunday morning on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was believed to be a robbery gone bad.
A resident of the projects said yesterday that Corbett lived in the area, and records showed an address for him on Oakland Street. The same resident said Corbett was a gifted artist who would make T-shirts with graffiti prints on them for people who lived in the area.
Corbett was shot once before, in May 1998. He was struck in the buttocks in a shooting he reported having occurred at the corner of Parkside Avenue and West State Street, though police never found a crime scene in that area. He was arrested later that year while riding in an allegedly stolen car.
Trenton Detective Edgar Rios and Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office Detective Bryan Cottrell have been assigned the case. Anyone with information is asked to call police at (609) 989-4170, or the Confidential Tip Line at (609) 989-3663.
Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.
