In the quiet cold of a December evening, a promising life was cut tragically short in a nature preserve in Hopewell Township, New Jersey. Phillip Urban, a 20-year-old male, was discovered in his car on a trail, having been fatally shot. A graduate of the nearby Pennington School, he was a freshman at Post University in Connecticut, where he was already making his mark on the basketball court as a talented forward. His sudden and violent death sent shockwaves through the communities he was a part of, from his hometown of Manalapan to his college campus.
The investigation into the young man's death quickly revealed a grim story. Authorities determined that he had made arrangements to meet someone at the Hopewell Valley Nature Preserve. The meeting, however, was a setup. Investigators uncovered a plot to rob him of a quarter-pound of marijuana, an exchange that was supposed to involve $800.
At some point during this fateful encounter, he was shot and left to be found by police responding to the scene. He was transported to a nearby medical center but was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.
The search for those responsible did not take long. Within a week, law enforcement officials arrested two teenagers, a 16-year-old from Pennington and a 17-year-old from Hopewell. The pair were taken into custody and faced a host of serious charges, including murder, felony murder, robbery, and weapons offenses. Due to their status as minors, their identities were not publicly released. The two were held at a youth detention center as the prosecutor's office began the process of determining whether to seek a waiver to have them tried as adults for their alleged roles in the fatal robbery.
