A convicted ecstasy dealer fatally shot an acquaintance on a city street during a botched drug deal, and authorities aren’t sure of a motive, prosecutors said.
“Only two people know the reason,” Assistant Prosecutor Brian McCauley said. “One guy is dead and another is not talking.”
Naquan Green
McCauley was referring to Naquan Green, 26, a convicted drug dealer who was arrested and charged March 4 with the murder of 25-year-old Taquan McNeil. Superior Court Judge Timothy Lydon maintained Green’s bail at $1.1 million, citing the strength of the state’s case and the defendant’s potential as a flight risk.
McNeil was found face-down in a snow bank after being shot three times Feb. 15 on the 100 block of Boudinot Street, prosecutors said at a bail hearing Tuesday. One of the bullets pierced both of his lungs, McCauley said.
Ballistics from shell casings found under McNeil’s body matched an unknown caliber gun authorities found in a nearby alley, and witnesses said Green was with the victim minutes before the murder.
McNeil and some friends had encountered Green at a city gas station after attending a Rick Ross rap concert earlier in the night, McCauley said. McNeil wanted to buy drugs from the defendant so they traveled together in a dark colored SUV to Boudinot Street, near Green’s former residence.
McCauley said witnesses’ account of the night is corroborated by surveillance authorities stitched together from multiple businesses.
Once in Green’s old neighborhood, the two men got out together while others waited in the car. Witnesses saw two men walking together; shots rang out and a dark-colored SUV was seen leaving the scene.
Green’s attorney, Sam Goldberg, said there is no physical evidence linking his client to the murder and eyewitness testimony is often unreliable.
An arrest warrant was issued for Green, who evaded authorities for two weeks, McCauley said, before he was arrested March 4 at a Bellevue Avenue apartment in Trenton by members of the U.S. MarshalsNY/NJ Regional Fugitive Task Force.
He was apprehended after a short pursuit in which he allegedly tossed a .357-caliber Ruger out of the fifth-floor window of the apartment. He was additionally charged for drug and gun possession after police found him with ecstasy, prosecutors said.
Green is a felon with several state and federal convictions, including for a 2005 drug offense as a juvenile. He was sentenced to three years in state prison in 2012 for a 2009 aggravated assault in which he used a bottle to strike someone, McCauley said.