In Paterson, New Jersey, 18-year-old Vishon Lamar Randolph, a Black male, stepped into the spring of 2017 carrying the kind of hopes that made his family proud. Known affectionately as “Man-Man,” he had grown up in the city, gone through the Paterson school system, and graduated from Panther Academy before enrolling at Passaic County Community College to study accounting.
Friends and relatives remembered him as polite, helpful, and outgoing, someone who loved basketball and moved easily among classmates and neighbors who saw him as a loyal friend and devoted son.
In the early hours of April 22, 2017, those plans were cut short on the corner of Straight Street and Montgomery Street. Around the time most of the city still slept, gunfire shattered the quiet. Police and emergency crews were called to the scene just before 3 a.m., where they found Randolph on the ground, struck multiple times. Another young man had also been hit by bullets but was still conscious and would later survive his wounds. Randolph was rushed to a local hospital but could not be saved. Early reports struggled even with basic details, with some outlets misreporting his age, underscoring the chaos that often surrounds sudden violence in the middle of the night.
In the immediate aftermath, investigators had no suspect to name. Detectives from the Paterson Police Department and the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office began canvassing the area, reviewing what surveillance footage they could find and taking statements from those who had been nearby. Within days, the investigation led them to a 19-year-old Paterson resident, Tamaj R. Lemmon. On the night of April 24, officers tracked him to the boiler room of a building on North 4th Street, where they arrested him. According to the prosecutor’s later account, Lemmon was found with dozens of glassine envelopes of heroin packaged for distribution, and a handgun was recovered nearby. As officers attempted to take him into custody and transport him, he allegedly struggled, injured an officer’s wrist, and briefly fled on foot before being caught again.
Prosecutors charged Lemmon with first-degree murder in Randolph’s death, along with attempted murder and multiple weapons offenses tied to the two other men who were with Randolph that night, identified in court records as Zimere Kellam and Tyshon Daniels. Investigators and prosecutors later described the shooting as part of an ongoing feud between rival neighborhood groups, portraying Randolph as associated with one side and Lemmon with the other. At trial, the State presented evidence that Lemmon fired a handgun toward all three men on Straight Street, hitting Kellam in the back and sending Daniels running for his life. Randolph was struck repeatedly in the back, fell, and then, according to testimony recounted in court opinions and news reports, Lemmon walked up and fired additional shots into his head and face at close range. Kellam survived; Daniels was not physically wounded, but both became central figures in explaining to the jury what had happened in those brutal seconds.
Jury selection began in May 2018, and the trial opened the following month. Over several weeks, jurors heard from witnesses, examined physical evidence, and listened to competing narratives about what had driven the violence that night on Straight and Montgomery. After five days of deliberations, a Passaic County jury found Lemmon guilty of first-degree murder for killing Randolph, unlawful possession of a handgun, multiple counts of possessing a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and aggravated assault for shooting Kellam. He was acquitted of the most serious charge involving the attempted murder of Daniels but still faced a decades-long sentence for the crimes of that night.
In September 2018, a judge sentenced Lemmon to a total of 74 years in New Jersey State Prison: 60 years for the murder and an additional 14 years for the weapons offenses, to be served consecutively. Because of state sentencing rules, he must serve the vast majority of that time before becoming eligible for parole, effectively binding his fate to the events of that April morning.
For Randolph’s family, friends, and the wider Paterson community, the conviction and lengthy sentence brought a measure of legal resolution but not true closure. Obituaries and memorial pages remember him by his given name and by “Man-Man,” the nickname shouted on playgrounds and in school hallways, emphasizing his kindness, his love of basketball, and the promise of a life that was only just beginning to unfold. Online tributes and candle-lighting pages mark him as one more face in the long roll of lives lost to gunfire, but among those who knew him, he remains the son, brother, friend, and student whose absence still shapes family gatherings and neighborhood memories years after the shots on Straight Street faded into silence.
