According to the authorities, 22-year-old Todd West is locked up in jail for murdering 7 individuals during a series of random killing sprees. The states in which the murders took place were Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
On Thursday, Union County Prosecutor Grace Park told that he murdered the 1st individual in Elizabeth in the month of May. The 1st victim was his cousin Michael Tompkins, who was 29 years old. After that, 3 individuals were shot to death in Elizabeth and neighboring Linden. The names of those 3 individuals are 29-year-old Jamil Payne, 32-year-old Kelvin Nelson and 28-year-old Dennis Vega who were killed on 25th of June. Richard Marte, 24, was the 4th individual who was shot but he didn’t die.
The authorities confirmed that from among his victims, West only knew one and all the others were unknown to him. The first victim was murdered around 2:30 a.m. while the other 3 were shot in a time period of 90-minutes after which he escaped Elizabeth for Pennsylvania where he murdered the rest of the victims.
22-year-old Kory Ketrow was getting back home on Sunday in Easton when he was shot to death at 3:15 a.m.
A friend of the victim, Michael Kutz, told The Morning Call, “There was no reason for them to do what they did, just go down the street and decide to kill somebody”.
After killing the 5th person, West and his crime partners, 20-year-old Robert A. Jourdain and 23-year-old Kareem Mitchell, went to Allentown, where they randomly selected and shot 32-year-old Francine Ramos and 21-year-old Trevor Gray inside a motor vehicle after almost 45 minutes.
On Monday, Jourdain and West were taken into custody by the authorities in Allentown while they were investigating a robbery case. After sometime, Mitchell surrendered.
According to the authorities in Lehigh County, a .38 caliber revolver was used to shoot the murder victims. The murder weapon was found in Pennsylvania after the investigation of the case. The authorities found the gun and 18 shell casings in a crashed Mercedes SUV that was a bit damaged; the motor vehicle was registered in the name of Mitchell’s mother.
West accepted that he shot 3 individuals with a gun in his hand, while Mitchell was the driver of the SUV and Jourdain was the person who purchased ammunition from a Walmart store and he was recorded on surveillance video.
A press conference was held on Thursday in which Park said, “This is an unprecedented, horrific event in Union County”.
Online records revealed that West was released from Mountain view Youth Correctional Facility in the month of October after he spent almost 1 year and 2 months there locked up on multiple charges.
All 3 individuals are locked up without bond in the Lehigh County Jail.
News Source: www.NYDailyNews.com
