In the quiet, early hours of a Saturday morning, the stillness on Central Avenue in Orange, New Jersey was broken by the sound of gunfire. On November 9, 2019, Shakur L. Cole, a 35-year-old Black male from Newark, found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just before 1 a.m., police responded to a call of a person shot and discovered Cole inside a vehicle, unresponsive. He had been fatally wounded and was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after.
The investigation that followed was a collaborative effort between the Orange Police Department and the Essex County Prosecutor's Homicide Task Force. For weeks, detectives worked to piece together the events that led to Cole's untimely death. Their efforts would eventually lead them to a single suspect, a man who would be linked to not one, but two recent homicides in the area.
The community was left on edge, awaiting answers and hoping for justice for the man whose life was cut short.
A breakthrough in the case came a little over a month later. On December 17, 2019, law enforcement officials located their suspect, Michael Mayse, a 33-year-old resident of Newark. A tense standoff ensued, but ultimately, Mayse was taken into custody. The arrest brought a sense of relief to the community, as it was revealed that Mayse was also a suspect in the fatal shooting of another man, Keyshawn Jones, which had occurred just two days prior in Newark. Mayse was subsequently charged with two counts of murder, in addition to multiple weapons offenses, bringing a close to the investigation and the beginning of the legal process to hold him accountable for the deaths of two men.
