A father was shot and killed in front of his children in North Arlington, New Jersey, and a relative was gunned down alongside him, in a burst of violence that erupted during what began as a routine handoff of the man's kids. Police are now searching for the gunman who opened fire and then fled the scene.
Authorities identified the two men killed as 28-year-old Brian Lockett and 29-year-old Ezekiel Aquino, who were shot on Ridge Road on Sunday night. The killings brought the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office and North Arlington police to the scene, where investigators worked late into the night to piece together exactly what had happened.
According to accounts of the shooting, the new boyfriend of the mother of Lockett's children had arrived to pick up the children that night and brought several friends along with him. What should have been an ordinary exchange quickly turned volatile as the two sides came face to face on the street.
All of a sudden, witnesses said, a fight broke out. In the chaos that followed, Lockett and Aquino were both shot to death, their lives ending in front of the very children who had been at the center of the handoff. The children themselves were not physically injured in the gunfire.
The presence of the children has made an already devastating case even more wrenching for the families involved and for the investigators working it. Officials have not said how many rounds were fired or precisely how the confrontation escalated from an argument into a double killing on a residential street.
No arrests had been announced as of Monday, and police said they were still searching for the person who pulled the trigger. Investigators have not released a detailed description of the gunman, and it was not immediately clear whether more than one person may have been involved in the shooting.
The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office is leading the investigation, and authorities have asked anyone with information to come forward. As the inquiry continues, a North Arlington neighborhood is left grappling with a shooting that turned a family custody exchange into a scene of deadly violence.