(UnitedVoice.com) – A Republican councilman has been shot dead in New Jersey — a week after one of his GOP colleagues was killed just 15 miles away. The new victim’s suspected killer was found dead within hours, and cops say the two murders aren’t linked, but with two council members from the same party killed days apart in the same state, it certainly reeks of an eerie coincidence.
Another NJ councilmember shot dead just a week after slaying of Eunice Dwumfour https://t.co/OH2ezLTxz6 pic.twitter.com/R5JIbUwicX
— New York Post (@nypost) February 9, 2023
On February 1, Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour, a popular 30-year-old single mother, was gunned down in her car outside her home in Sayreville, New Jersey. Witnesses heard a string of rapid shots then saw a man running from the scene, but her assailant still hasn’t been identified. The FBI are now involved in the investigation and cops are trying to work out the motive, although they believe Dwumfour was deliberately targeted. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D) said the murder seemed “very specific” but insisted he didn’t believe she was killed for her politics.
Now, exactly a week later, a second Republican in New Jersey’s local government is dead. The body of 51-year-old Russell Heller was found around 7:02 a.m. on February 8, in the parking lot of energy company PSE&G’s headquarters in Franklin Township, New Jersey — just 15 miles from where Dwumfour was killed. State police quickly identified the suspect as 58-year-old Gary T Curtis, a former PSE&G employee who was fired last year. The Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office says Heller had disciplined Curtis when he worked for the company, and Curtis killed him in revenge. Curtis was found around 10:20 a.m. in a parking lot in Bridgewater, dead from a gunshot wound cops believe was self-inflicted.
So far, there’s no sign that the two killings were connected in any way, but for two Republican politicians to be murdered just 15 miles apart in the space of a week is a remarkable coincidence. In a country as politically divided as the US is right now, we can do without coincidences like this.
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