NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—New Brunswick police are investigating a shooting which took place at about 5pm on May 5 in Recreation Park, also known as “Pine Street Park.”
No victim was located but several witnesses told police there had been a shooting. Â According to police radio transmissions, witnesses said the shooting involved a group of about ten men.
Witnesses in the park told officers that a shooting victim had left the scene in a black Honda Accord, according to the transmissions.
On March 21, a man was injured in a shooting that took place in the park, which located in the Second Ward near the city’s Water Treatment Plant and the Bristol-Myers Squibb campus.
About 30 minutes after the Recreation Park shooting was reported, police dispatchers received a report of a “fall victim” on the basketball courts at Alice Archibald Jennings Park, located in the Fourth Ward near the McKinley Elementary School.
Five minutes after that initial report, the incident was re-classified as a “shots fired” call, after another caller indicated a man had been shot in the chest, describing the suspect as a white man wearing a multi-colored shirt.
But that report proved to be false, according to the police radio transmissions.
Dispatchers and police eventually figured out that the caller had attempted to garner a quicker response from emergency medical personnel for what turned out to be a dislocated shoulder sufferred on the basketball court.
Charlie is the founder and editor of New Brunswick Today, and the winner of the Awbrey Award for Community-Oriented Local Journalism. He is a proud Rutgers University journalism graduate, a community organizer, and a former independent candidate for mayor of New Brunswick.
