“Well, I didn’t shoot,” a Salem man allegedly told investigators of a shooting that killed a Bridgeton girl as she slept in her bed.
Charles Gamble, 18, was ordered detained pending trial Wednesday, in the July 17 shooting that killed 9-year-old Jennifer Trejo as she laid in be with her sister.
Michael Elliott, 25, and Leroy Frazier III, 20, both of Bridgeton, already have been ordered held in the case.
Only the alleged shooter, 19-year-old Zahmere McKoy, is awaiting his hearing. His hearing has been moved to Tuesday.
Gamble was the alleged driver that night. Surveillance from around the area of Church Street, where Trejos lived with her family, showed Gamble’s car, Assistant Prosecutor Elizabeth Vogelsong told the judge.
When Gamble was arrested, there was a 9mm handgun in the trunk, she said.
Gamble gave investigators a “lengthy” statement, at first denying he had even been in the area, Vogelsong told Superior Court Judge Cristen D’Arrigo.
But after being questioned about his car’s presence and whether he was “the worst of the four” that were there, Gamble replied: “Well, I didn’t shoot,” Vogelsong said.
“He no longer denied being there, just denied being the shooter,” she added.
The little girl was in bed with her sister when a stray bullet came through her bedroom and struck her, according to the charges.
The bullet the hit her allegedly came from the gun McKoy shot.
McKoy has other pending cases, including a July 4 burglary for which he had his first appearance Wednesday.
He already was in police custody when the murder charge came, after he was shot during an Aug. 20 altercation with a man at a Bridgeton gas station.
McKoy was hospitalized in that case, and then charged with aggravated assault with a weapon and weapons offenses.
Despite Wednesday’s ruling to keep Gamble jailed, the Salem man will have another detention hearing in Salem County Superior Court on Thursday, for the gun charge, since he was stopped in Salem.
