Shooting death of Plainfield man is second in 24 hours for city's violent West End
Published: Friday, November 12, 2010, 9:37 PM Updated: Saturday, November 13, 2010, 9:51 AM
Plainfield Police surround West Front Street in Plainfield where a person was shot and killed outside the El Tri De Mexico business Thursday afternoon. Another Plainfield man was shot and killed today in the same section of town. PLAINFIELD — For the second time in 24 hours, gun shots rang out in Plainfield’s violence-plagued West End section with the same tragic outcome: a young man was dead.
Although the two shootings appear to be unrelated, they both occurred in broad daylight and left local residents frustrated as Plainfield’s homicide rate continues to spike.
Around 3 p.m. today, police responded to a shooting on the 900 block of West Third Street, where they found a fatally wounded 23-year-old man, according to the Union County prosecutor’s office.
Detectives from the prosecutor’s office who responded were already in the neighborhood, only seven blocks away, examining the crime scene from another homicide that occurred Thursday afternoon.
Leo Sinclair, who lives next to the Second Street Youth Center about a block away from today’s shooting, was cleaning his icebox when he heard the shots. "It sounded like a machine gun," he said, "I hollered, ‘Get those kids indoors!’ "
Friends identified the victim as Keith Hathaway, a former football player at Plainfield High School. No arrests had been made as of last night and a motive for the shooting was not clear, the prosecutor’s office said.
Today's shooting appeared to have taken place in the backyard of a home on the block. A condemned building across the street bears spray-painted memorials to two other young men killed in Plainfield. Crime scene photographers were documenting the area under a setting sun. Two mourners lit a pair of memorial candles in his honor on the sidewalk.
Hathaway’s death is the seventh homicide in Plainfield this year, far outpacing the two homicides that took place in Union County’s second-largest city in 2009.
Hathaway’s friends said he had returned to the city a few months ago from a stint in jail. Cheryl Forman, 50, remembered him as a respectful young man who got into trouble dealing drugs.
"You’ve got to do what you got to do to get by, but at the end of the day, he loved the Lord," she said, lamenting the lack of options for young people with criminal histories. "Plainfield isn’t offering any way out for 14- to-28-year-olds."
A few blocks away, friends and acquaintances mourned 17-year-old Plainfield High School senior Spencer Cadogan, who was shot in the head in front of a West Front Street restaurant about 3 p.m. Thursday.
"He was kind of one of those laid-back kids, nothing much fazed him," said high school principal Brian Bilal, noting the school had a grief counseling team for the day. "Students are handling their business, going to classes, but just a very somber mood."
More than 100 people wrote messages of tribute on a Facebook memorial to Spencer. Some used nicknames like "Spin" for the young man, whose family said he aspired to be a rapper.
"All of us running and to look back and see you was shot down killed me inside, this was the worst day ever," one woman wrote on the social networking site.
Former councilman Al Hendricks, who lives a few blocks from today's shooting, said the violence plaguing his neighborhood is partly due to a lack of activities for young people.
"This is my home, and I’m watching it just crumble before my eyes," said Hendricks. "It’s a community with nothing for the kids to do."
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