In the pre-dawn hours of July 27, 2022, a report of gunshots shattered the quiet of a Bayonne, New Jersey neighborhood. At approximately 4:27 a.m., officers from the Bayonne Police Department were dispatched to the vicinity of 21st Street and Avenue A. Upon their arrival, they discovered a male victim inside a vehicle on West 21st Street. The man, later identified as 23-year-old Damoi Davauni Campbell of New York, was pronounced dead at the scene. An investigation by the Regional Medical Examiner's Office would later determine that Campbell's death was a homicide caused by gunshot wounds to his back.
For nearly a year, the investigation into Campbell's death continued. Then, in late June 2023, the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office Homicide Unit announced a significant breakthrough in the case with the charging of three individuals.
The suspects were identified as Mitchell Watson, 22, and Hafis Jackson, 20, both from Salem, New Jersey, and Daynajah Payne, 24, of Irvington, New Jersey. The charges brought against them included murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
The arrests of the three suspects unfolded over a couple of days. Daynajah Payne was apprehended in Long Valley, New Jersey, on Wednesday, June 28, 2023. The following day, Mitchell Watson was arrested in Salem. Both were subsequently held at the Hudson County Correctional Facility. At the time of the announcement, Hafis Jackson was already in custody at the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington, Delaware, on unrelated charges. The charges against Watson and Jackson also included two counts of unlawful possession of a weapon and two counts of possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.
