Four people charged in NJ security officer murder
Essex County NJ December 19 2019
Four men have been charged in a brutal beating of 62-year-old security guard on his way home from work that led to his death months later, acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore N. Stephens announced Tuesday.
Samuel V. Gbotoe was walking to his Irvington home from his security job at Newark Liberty International Airport around 7 a.m. on March 13 when a group of men and women attacked him. He died on June 8, the prosecutor’s office said.
Keandre S. Johnson, 21, of Irvington, and Trazariah Shells, 18, and Elexus Bass, 20, both of Newark, face charges of murder, felony murder, robbery, conspiracy, aggravated assault and endangering an injured victim. Johnson is currently incarcerated in the Essex County Correctional facility on other charges and Shells is in police custody, while Bass remains at large.
Duwann Baldwin-Elliott, 20, of Maplewood faces charges conspiracy, robbery and aggravated assault. He also remains at large.
The prosecutor’s office said more arrests are possible. Authorities reviewed surveillance video of the attack and said the group attacked others, too.
Gbotoe was attacked near Isabella Avenue and University Place in Irvington. City police said they found him on the ground with head trauma and transported him to University Hospital, in Newark.
In May, he was taken to Beth Abraham Rehabilitation Center in the Bronx, New York for rehabilitative services. He was transported on June 7 to another location in the Bronx, Jacobi Hospital, where he died the following day, the prosecutor’s office said.
An autopsy report from the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office on Oct. 8 concluded Gbotoe’s death was a homicide caused by complications from blunt force trauma to the neck.
The Essex County Sheriff’s Crime Stoppers previously offered a reward of $10,000 for information in Gbotoe’s beating. Photos of suspects in the attack were also released to the public in November by the prosecutor’s office.
