A city man accused in the 2014 springtime murder of a former drug dealer was recently charged with killing a Ewing man in 2012 during a botched robbery after recent witnesses came forward, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Markquice “Tank” Thomas, 29, is charged with the brazen broad daylight shooting of 22-year-old Jared Littlejohn, who was kidnapped Sept. 27, 2012 and driven to a parking lot on Parkside Avenue where he was shot and run over with his own vehicle, prosecutors said. He is being held on a combined $1.6 million cash-only bail.
During a bail hearing Assistant Prosecutor Michelle Gasparian said Littlejohn is seen on a soundless video surveillance screaming and struggling to get out of the passenger’s side of his vehicle before he is forcibly pulled back in before being driven to an apartment complex parking lot where he was shot in the head.
Gasparian said phone records show Thomas and Littlejohn spoke on the phone minutes before he was kidnapped. Witnesses placed Thomas in the victim’s car on the day in question and said he later told them he killed the victim following a “robbery gone bad,” Gasparian said.
Thomas found out prosecutors were filing additional murder charges against him while he was incarcerated on charges that he killed 44-year-old Joseph “Power God” Gaines last March.
Gaines was a former city drug dealer who had reportedly turned his life around to become a counselor for troubled youth.
Superior Court Judge Robert Billmeier asked Gasparian at the hearing why the state waited more than two years before charging Thomas with Littlejohn’s murder.
Gasparian said it was not “prudent” to file the charges until investigators had all the necessary pieces, including recent statements from witnesses.
“The state was not hasty to charge,” until it had all the evidence, Gasparian said.
Robin Lord, Thomas’ attorney, said the case against her client is largely circumstantial and there is no direct evidence linking him to Littlejohn’s murder.
She also questioned the timing of the new murder charge, implying the state’s new witnesses are either jailhouse informants or people facing their own criminal troubles who have, in turn, agreed to turn on her client for a deal with prosecutors.
She also chastised prosecutors for trying to speak with her client about Littlejohn’s murder without her permission. Lord said prosecutors misrepresented to her client that she was no longer representing him based on a motion prosecutors filed asking that she be recused.
Prosecutors want Lord off the case because they say she has a conflict of interest. Lord once represented Gaines, the murder victim, in a prior matter and is currently representing Trenton Police Detective Damon Jefferson in a civil matter against city police. Jefferson was involved in the investigation of Gaines’ death.
The matter is scheduled to be heard by a judge later this month.