New York, NY —
Newark police are seeking a fourth suspect in the execution style murders of three college-age young people on August 4th. Newark mayor Cory Booker announced the warrant for Rodolfo Godinez on Saturday morning at a brief press conference wedged between funerals. The victims were buried on Saturday after funerals at three different Baptist churches around the city. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter spoke with the mourners.
REPORTER: Dashon Harvey, Terrance Aeriel and Iofemi Hightower were close friends, and many of the mourners at their funerals knew all three of them, along with Terrance’s sister Natasha Aeriel, who survived. For alumni of Westside High School, which three of the four had attended, it was the saddest of reunions.
KHADIJAH: I can’t believe this either. My God, I just talked to him on Saturday…
REPORTER: That was just hours before Terrance, known as TJ, was killed. Outside his funeral at New Hope Baptist Church, Khadijah Davis was being consoled by her friend Latesha Adams.
LATESHA: TJ had a future. If you knew him, he was a wonderful kid, like he made you laugh when you were down and out. He made you laugh...
REPORTER: Anona Huntley and Nicholas Couser held hands tightly while they talked to reporters. Nicholas was a couple of years ahead of TJ at both Westside High School and Delaware State University. Huntley runs the honors science program at Westside.
ANONA: This one was especially hard for me. Because I just saw them in June. They came to the school, Natasha, Terrance, Iofemi – I used to tease her, I’d call her Iofe-you, Iofe-mi – I didn’t know Dashon but he could have been with them that day. They always came by to see me, always with that bright smile on their face, Natasha as well as Terrance…
NICHOLAS: Natasha, his sister, same thing, just like her brother, always kept a smile on her face. They’d be the last two people you’d ever expect to go through a thing like this. And the killers, they need to be caught, because they’re wrong, they’re wrong. They took good people. They took all three of my friends. They’re wrong.
REPORTER: This triple murder was particularly shocking, but hardly new. People at the funerals were carrying memories of other murders before this one. Iofemi Hightower’s cousin Malika Smith said her son, 25-year-old David Gordon,was killed two years ago.
MALIKA: So this is like a sore being reopened for me. ‘Femi, she chose the right path but unfortunately she didn’t get a chance to escape from the bad things that happen here.
REPORTER: A block away, Darlene Covington and her brother Tim were standing in the shade with a cluster of youth workers and children aged two to fifteen. Darlene is a health activist and Tim a foster parent, and they worry for the kids they look after.
TIM: Unsafe. This is an unsafe block. But danger is everywhere. So you just have to watch yourself around here, and that’s basically what we do.
REPORTER: Darlene said she herself spent the days after the murders in fear.
DARLENE: Being afraid to be outside after hours, being afraid to go to a waterpark, to a neighborhood park in fear of your life being taken – that right there, we shouldn’t have to live that way.
REPORTER: Around the funerals, people expressed outrage and suggested remedies from better home raising to calling in the National Guard. Still, this was a day for grief. At Grace Temple Baptist Church in the West Ward, Pastor John McClain, presided over the funeral of Iofemi Hightower – his own grand-niece.
REV. MCCLAIN: It’s sadness all over, but now we are coming together. And the family understands that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. So we are gonna ride out of here on that; that that word is true.
REPORTER: Moments later, portraits of all three murder victims were brought out of the church and placed by the hearse like a guard of honor. Women dressed in brilliant white carried bouquets of yellow flowers. The pallbearers quickly loaded the casket of 20-year-old Iofemi Hightower into the car for the trip to the cemetery, the final act in Newark’s long day of sadness and sacrifice.
REPORTER: For WNYC, I’m Siddhartha Mitter