On a cold December evening in Newark, New Jersey, a young man's life was tragically cut short in a burst of violence that shattered the evening calm. Nineteen-year-old Armani D. McPhall was fatally shot on December 22, 2016. The incident occurred shortly before 8 p.m. near the entrance of Vailsburg Wine and Liquors on the 900 block of South Orange Avenue.
Responding to reports of gunfire, Newark police officers arrived at the scene to find McPhall suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the location. The investigation into the shooting was swiftly undertaken by the Essex County Prosecutor's Major Crimes Task Force, which includes detectives from the Newark Police Department.
The investigation led to the identification and arrest of a suspect, Mustafa Hill, a 43-year-old resident of Newark who lived just blocks from the scene of the crime.
A significant piece of evidence in the case was in-store video footage that captured the shooting, which aided the Essex County Prosecutor's Office Homicide Task Force in charging Hill on the same evening as the incident.
In September 2018, Mustafa Hill pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter for the killing of Armani McPhall. He admitted to shooting McPhall multiple times with a 9mm handgun. In exchange for his guilty plea, Hill was sentenced to 25 years in New Jersey State Prison. Under the terms of his sentence, he is required to serve 85 percent of the term before becoming eligible for parole and will be subject to five years of parole supervision upon his release. This was not Hill's first homicide conviction; he had previously been charged in another killing in May of 1993, for which he also pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and was sentenced to prison.
