UPDATE: Victim identified



Neighborhood residents expressed fear and anger this morning in the aftermath of a fatal shooting on Lexington Avenue near Kennedy Boulevard that happened at approximately 12:30 a.m. this morning.

One Lexington Avenue resident, who declined to give his name, had just returned home from work and was eating at his kitchen table when he heard "between four and five" gunshots. He said he remembers the exact time, 12:27 a.m.

The man said he looked out his window approximately five minutes later and saw the man who was shot lying on the pavement, but still moving.

"He wasn't dead yet, not when I first saw him," the man said.

Another man who lives on Lexington and also declined to give his name said that he’s noticed what seemed like an uptick in criminal activity on the street in recent weeks.

“It didn’t used to be like this,” he said.

A. Smith, a neighborhood resident who declined to give her first name, said that police officers spent over an hour on Clendenny Avenue, one block away from Lexington, looking through garbage containers and walking the spaces in between houses.

“It was trash night, and they were looking through everyone’s garbage,” she said.

Smith also has noticed increased violence in the neighborhood.

“Not a week goes by that you don’t hear gunshots,” Smith said. “I was just saying, last night, that things seemed quiet. And then – gunshots.”

“This used to be a good place to feel safe, on the Boulevard,” Smith said referring to Kennedy Boulevard. “Not anymore.”

Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Gene Rubino could not be immediately reached for comment.

The shooting took place just a block away from the corner of Bergen and Lexington avenues -- one of seven locations where police are beefing up their presence to quell gun violence they say is stemming from drug trafficking and street disputes.

Three blocks from the site of this morning's shooting, Jersey City Police Det. Melvin Santiago was ambushed and killed last month at a Walgreens pharmacy on the corner of Communipaw Avenue and Kennedy Boulevard.