TRENTON – Two women were shot in separate shootings Thursday and early Friday morning, with one suspected of being domestic-related while the second started out as a fight, police said.
No one has been arrested in connection with the shootings.
Police believe the afternoon shooting on the 1400 block of West State Street may have started off as s domestic spat. Officers encountered the woman bleeding from her mouth with a gunshot wound to her face around 3:05 p.m., Trenton Police Lt. Jason Kmiec said.
The victim was unable to provide information to police due to her injuries. She was transported by ambulance to Capital Health Regional Medical Center where she was being treated for a shattered jaw bone, police said.
She claimed to hospital staff that she shot herself, but doctors did not believe the woman’s injuries were consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Kmiec said.
The gun the woman allegedly used to shoot herself was not found anywhere in the home, leading police to suspect the assailant left with the weapon.
A second-floor neighbor reported not hearing commotion or the gunshot, Kmiec said.
The second shooting happened around 1:13 a.m. Friday on the first block of Mellon Street.
A 27-year-old woman showed up at the hospital after being shot during a fight with another woman, cops said.
The victim and the woman, who went by the street name “Nana,” initially got into a physical altercation around 11:44 p.m. Nana left and later returned with a man in a Jeep, Kmiec said.
The two women renewed the altercation, and then as the fight ended and the Nana walked away, the man in the Jeep opened fire on the 27-year-old woman, Kmiec said.
The victim suffered non-life-threatening injuries. The Shooting Response Team is investigating.
The continuing carnage happened hours after city officials and clergy gathered Thursday morning on the steps of City Hall for a peace rally.
The rally came a day after a 12-year-old girl and two men, ages 31 and 36, were wounded in a triple shooting on Wood Street.
The girl was playing with her 7-year-old sister at Roberto Clemente Park when someone opened fire on a group gambling in an alleyway. The 7-year-old hit her head running for cover.
City officials decried the violence at a news conference the same day.
TPD Director Sheilah Coley called on the community to partner with police to crack down on gun-toters.
“If two young girls can’t galvanize this community, then we have no hope and nothing else will,” she said. “We can still take this city back.”
The triple shooting happened a day after 37-year-old Dontae Barnes was gunned down on Oakland Street, the city’s 15th homicide of the year.
Trenton is on pace for 30 murders this year, which would make it the third-deadliest year on record, behind only the 37 in 2013 and 31 in 2005, during the height of the gang wars.
