Three of the young men who were eventually arrested and charged in the crime were from Newark. A fourth man was from the neighboring town of Irvington.
“It is like a diseased town,” said the Newark store owner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the assailants in the Mercedes case, who have not been caught. “There are a lot of predators.”
Carjackings are nothing new to Newark, a city that was among the nation’s worst for such crimes in the 1990s. Like other cities, Newark saw the number of carjackings fall in subsequent years. But they have returned to Newark with a vengeance.
In 2007, there were 208 reported carjackings in all of New Jersey. In 2012, there were 345 in Newark alone, 56 of which took place in December, according to the Newark police.
Already this year, there had been 475 carjackings in Essex County as of Friday, the vast majority of those in Newark, according to the Essex County prosecutor’s office. In contrast, New York City had seen 159 carjackings this year as of Friday, and there has been a general decline over the last five years, the Police Department said.