In the winter of 2014, the life of 18-year-old Jaime Walker was cut short on a street in Irvington, New Jersey. On the evening of December 17th, Walker was walking down Orange Avenue with his friend, Davon Arrington, when gunfire erupted. Walker was fatally wounded in the attack. Arrington, though shot in the face, survived his injuries which included a broken jaw and a severed tongue.
The shooting of the two men was not a random act of violence.
Both Walker and Arrington had been witnesses to a murder that occurred just a month prior, on November 18, 2014. The victim in that earlier incident was Mencea Ryner. The man convicted of Ryner's murder, Jerrell Alexander, was also implicated in the violence that befell Walker and Arrington.
In the aftermath of the shooting that claimed Jaime Walker's life, the investigation led to charges against two men. While Jerrell Alexander was acquitted of conspiracy to commit Walker's murder, he was found guilty of unlawful possession of a 9mm handgun, the same type of weapon used in the fatal shooting. For the murder of Mencea Ryner, Alexander was sentenced to 40 years in prison, with an additional eight years for the weapon possession charge.
Another individual, Jassiem Harper, was directly charged with the murder of Jaime Walker and as a co-conspirator in the shooting. His case was severed from Alexander's, to be handled in a separate court proceeding.
