A teenager charged with shooting and killing Devahje Bing at a West Ward cookout in 2013 was named in public for the first time Thursday as a juvenile who was under house arrest at the time.
Tahj Laws was 15 on May 25 last year when he allegedly left his home on Trenton’s Nassau Street and, as tracked by the security monitor on his ankle, walked to the cookout on nearby Oakland Street.
Devahje Bing
Shortly before 5 p.m., the suspect encountered Bing, 19, with whom he had previously argued. Laws allegedly pulled a handgun and shot Bing in the chest. He was dead in 20 minutes.
In addition to the evidence from the suspect’s GPS device, authorities have Laws on Roger Garden Apartments surveillance video allegedly shooting at the victim, Assistant Mercer County Prosecutor Skylar Weissman said.
The prosecutor said a juvenile judge cleared Laws as an adult on murder charges. He was under house arrest and wearing the monitoring anklet for a previous conviction on drug charges, Weissman said.
Laws was represented by Assistant Mercer Public Defender Jenna Casper, who said the suspect was a high school student and had received permission to attend the cookout that day.
But that wasn’t enough to convince Superior Court Judge Pedro Jimenez to reduce his $1 million bail and Laws was taken back to a juvenile jail after the hearing.