On the late evening of May 9, 2024, the life of 38-year-old Baseem Taliaferro, a male resident of Galloway Township, was tragically cut short. Inside a first-floor apartment at 9 West Pleasant Avenue in Pleasantville, police responded to a call of shots fired shortly after 11 p.m. Upon arrival, they discovered Taliaferro with a fatal gunshot wound to his chest; he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The investigation into the shooting pointed to an argument that had taken place just twenty
minutes prior to the fatal shot. A witness reported a dispute involving 35-year-old Kalief Lyons and several other individuals near the apartment building. Following the altercation, Lyons reportedly left the area. However, surveillance footage captured him returning to the rear of the building, his face obscured by a ski mask. Approximately two minutes after the shooting, the same surveillance system recorded Lyons walking away, this time without the mask.
Within two and a half hours of the incident, officers with the Galloway Township Police Department located and arrested Lyons. At the time of his arrest, he was found in possession of a 9mm handgun and a significant quantity of narcotics. The clothes he was wearing matched the description from the surveillance footage. Subsequent ballistics tests confirmed that the handgun found on Lyons was the same weapon used to murder Baseem Taliaferro.
Further investigation revealed that at the time of the killing, Lyons was on home detention. He was awaiting sentencing for a prior, unrelated firearms offense from November 2022. In March 2024, he had pleaded guilty to second-degree charges for being a certain person not to possess a firearm. Despite objections from the state, the court had released him without a monitoring bracelet to await his May 28 sentencing date. Following his arrest for Taliaferro's death, Lyons was charged with murder and multiple weapons offenses and was held at the Atlantic County Justice Facility. He was later sentenced to 10 years in prison for the prior gun charge, a sentence he will serve while the murder case proceeds through the courts.
