NJ.com published the following article on 7/12/2014. To read the full article, click here.

Trenton’s surging homicide rate is on pace to meet last year’s record

Brielle Urciuoli | July 12, 2014

In the closing days of June, two men died bloody deaths on the streets of Trenton. One was, for a brief time, a John Doe, an unidentified corpse found in an alley. Police later identified him as 23-year-old Honduran native Juan Carlos Castillo. The other was Trenton resident Naquan Ellis, also 23, who received a fatal bullet wound in the chest.

Their deaths occurred sometime overnight on June 25, and became homicides Nos. 18 and 19 of the first half of 2014, landing the city exactly where it was this time last year: at 19 homicides.

Last year, Trenton went on to reach its all-time high number of homicides, with 37. This year, the tide of blood on the city’s streets defies all of the efforts by Trenton police and outside law enforcement agencies to put crimp in the death toll.

“We’re never going to bring business here,’’ acting Police Director Ernest Parrey Jr. said in an interview last week. “We’re never going to bring tourism here. We’re never going to bring the economic side of the house back here if we don’t address the public safety issue.”

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