A Union County man has been arrested and charged with carjacking and aggravated assault after he allegedly fired more than a dozen shots at a crowd gathered in a park near a high school, authorities said.<\/p>\n
Ryan Billups, 20, of Rahway, was arrested at his home after detectives said he and another man wearing a mask pointed a gun at a driver in the 100 block of E. Gibbons Street in Linden early on April 15.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe men allegedly approached the vehicle, ordered the driver out at gunpoint, and fled with the stolen vehicle,\u201d Linden police said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Billups and the accomplice allegedly drove the stolen vehicle hours later to a park near Linden High School, where multiple shots were fired.<\/p>\n
Shortly before 9 p.m., more than a dozen rounds were fired toward a crowd gathered in the park in the 1000 block of Summit Terrace, police said.<\/p>\n
No injuries were reported in the shooting.<\/p>\n
After a month-long investigation, Billups was identified as a suspect in both incidents and arrested at his home on May 28, police said.<\/p>\n
Billups is charged with first-degree carjacking, first-degree conspiracy, multiple counts of third- and fourth-degree aggravated assault, and two second-degree weapons offenses.<\/p>\n
He remained Thursday morning at the Essex County Jail pending court hearings. Attorney information was not available in jail or court records.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a complex and comprehensive investigation, and I am proud of the officers and detectives whose relentless efforts led to these charges,\u201d Linden Police Chief David Hart said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Both incidents remain under investigation. <\/p>\n
Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Ariel Franjul at 908-474-8538 or at afranjul@lpdnj.org<\/a>. Detective Dan Hemenway can be reached at 908-474-8532 or at dhemenway@lpdnj.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Union County man has been arrested and charged with carjacking and aggravated assault after he allegedly fired…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-256251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}