The cries of "Enough is Enough!" came down from the pulpits during the Saturday of the funerals a decade ago. At the service for Terrance Aeriel, more than 1,000 people heard Cory Booker, then the Newark Mayor, roar of "a new day when we stand together and say, 'Enough is enough is enough' ... and get this evil out of our city." On...
The cries of "Enough is Enough!" came down from the pulpits during the Saturday of the funerals a decade ago.
At the service for Terrance Aeriel, more than 1,000 people heard Cory Booker, then the Newark Mayor, roar of "a new day when we stand together and say, 'Enough is enough is enough' ... and get this evil out of our city."
On the same morning in a different church, mourners passed the open casket of Iofemi Hightower, whose face and neck bore the visible machete scars inflicted by her killers.
Her mother insisted the casket remain open, in the same way Emmett Till's mother did in 1955, to show the world the open wounds of hate and violence. Shalga Hightower, hoped the deaths of her child and two friends, would galvanize the community against street murder the way Till's death gave consciousness to the civil rights movement.
Dashon Harvey was laid to rest first that day, his coffin carried in a horse-drawn hearse. It was followed by a parade of hundreds of mourners wearing buttons that said "Stop the Killing Now" and "Enough is Enough."
They would move from church to church to church that Saturday morning to show support for the victims' families and solidarity against the epidemic of street violence.
A week earlier, on the evening of Aug. 4, 2007, the three friends and Terrance's sister, Natasha Aeriel, were accosted and forced to lie down in an isolated playground at the Mount Vernon School in Newark, where they were hacked with a machete and shot execution-style.
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In a city, and nation, saturated with and weary of street violence, the "Mount Vernon Schoolyard Murders," as they became known, reached new levels of shock and outrage.
"Horrific," said Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, then the principal of Central High School and a vocal activist in the city. "It sent shock waves through the city because these were kids not involved in any traditional level of violence."
"It was off the charts," said Anthony Ambrose, Newark's current public safety director, former police chief and former chief of detectives for the Essex County Prosecutor's Office.
"What made it most shocking was that these were good kids, the kind of kids you don't see involved in crimes," Ambrose said. "They were just minding their own business, hanging out in a public place like we used to do, just listening to music. And then this happened."
Three of the victims were students at Delaware State College, where Hightower planned to join them in September. They were band members. Terrance Aeriel wanted to be a preacher. Hightower was his prom date.
His sister, Natasha, was interested in social work. Dashon Harvey loved being the center of attention and was the drum major in high school. They were all 20 or younger -- bright futures in front of them.
"In 10 minutes, my whole life changed," Natasha Aeriel said in a phone call from Atlanta last week. "In 10 minutes, nothing would ever be the same for me, or my friends' families. Just like that."
That night 10 years ago, the kids got some takeout food and went to the home of Aeriel's mother, Renee Tucker. They left at 9:45 p.m. and drove through the unlocked gates of the vast schoolyard playground adjacent to three buildings of the massive Ivy Hill apartment complex. They sat on the bleachers with Natasha's Toyota Corolla parked nearby, its doors open and the sound system on.
Soon after, six Hispanic boys and men arrived. Two of them, Shahid Baskerville and Gerardo Gomez were just 15, Melvin Jovel was 18 and Alexander Alfaro was 16. The leaders, Rodolfo Godinez, Alfaro's brother, was 24 and Jose Carranza was 28. The older men were associated with the MS-13 gang.
They made some small talk with the victims but suddenly Terrance got a bad vibe.
"Itz tym 2 go," he texted his sister, just a few feet away. As they moved to the car, the group closed in on them. A gun and machete and steak knife were brandished. The group rifled their pockets and purses and the car. At that point, Natasha feared only a robbery, "then things got crazy."
Throughout the configuration of the sand-colored brick school, there are a number of isolated courtyards and alleyways.
Natasha was separated from the others, who were led to a wall in one of those courtyards. She was manhandled in a sexual way and cut with the steak knife. Then she heard the shots. Moments later, she, too, was shot and left for dead.
Ten years ago.
She has lived with it for a full third of her life now.
"We'd all be turning 30," Natasha said. "That's what I think about. Not so much the crime, but what I'm missing. I'm missing that they're not here. All of us were supposed to grow up and celebrate our transitions. There is always a feeling that they should be here."
She earned a master's degree in social work from Clarkson University in Atlanta.
Ten years of scars.
Natasha works with children who sometime lack filters.
"The kids are funny," she said. "They just ask me, 'Why is your lip like that?' Why do you have a crooked smile?' I tell them the truth. 'I got shot.' People see my beauty through it, I know."
She has no hearing in her left ear, and sometimes has to explain it.
"It's not hard for me to talk about," she said.
Ten years of trials and appeals.
All those involved in the attack were convicted and given sentences that amount to two centuries, except for Baskerville who pleaded guilty to robbery and sexual assault and is serving 30 years.
Troy Bradshaw, the father of Natasha and Terrance, sat through the motions, trials and appeals, the most recent just last month as Gomez sought a new trial. That case is pending. Alfaro made a similar plea earlier this year and was denied.
"It never seems to end," Bradshaw said. "But as soon as we were done burying our kids, we made a decision to fight. This has been a long haul and it's never going to end for us. We live with that. Terrance is gone; Natasha is doing okay but, you know, has her issues."
Ten years of anti-violence activism and support for other victim's families.
James Harvey spent the first few years in front of the cameras at every rally or announcement of new crime-stopping programs but has receded in past half-decade. He sent word through prosecutor Romesh Sukhdeo that he did not want to be interviewed for this column.
"My family and I don't want to keep reliving (this) horrible tragedy in our lives," he said.
"I understand that," Bradshaw said. "You can't be at every rally. You can't be at everyone's house."
Shalga Hightower has been very active in the anti-violence movement, and in 2015 formed a non-profit called "Iofemi: A Gift of Love" to help grieving mothers of murdered children. But her last Facebook post was Christmas of last year.
She had a medical event this spring which, Sukhdeo said, she described as "broken heart syndrome." She, too, declined to be interviewed for this article.
And to compound the personal loss of the families, Bradshaw said, is that the community galvanization against violence seemed so short-lived.
On that August night in 2007, Terrance Aeriel, Iofemi Hightower, Dashon Harvey became the 57th, 58th, and 59th homicide of that year. There were 46 more that year, and roughly 850 in the city since then. This year, there have been 35 in Newark, as of Wednesday, the lowest mid-year number since 2008, the year after the Mount Vernon murders.
"A kid got shot right around the corner from my house just two weeks ago," Bradshaw said. "In the end, nothing changed, except the kids doing the killing are getting younger."
Baraka and Ambrose take the view that even reduced numbers aren't enough.
"It's still crazy out there," Baraka said. "This year our police have taken 300 guns off the streets. They've taken 4,000 guns off the streets since 2012."
"It's shocking how many guns are coming into this city," Ambrose said. "When you have that many weapons, homicides are going to follow."
Bradshaw has a daughter, Lashane, 13, that he or his wife, Sherry, walk to and from school every day or wherever she goes.
"I don't let her out of my sight," he said.
"I have two male cousins, 16 and 18," Natasha said. "I'm afraid for them every day. One thing I know about Newark: we love Newark, but Newark doesn't love anybody. It's heart-wrenching to know kids just can't be outside. You can't just hang out. All this shooting and killing and disregard for life."
For her master's thesis she wrote a paper about the societal impact of gun violence. She'd like to know what was going through the heads of the people who killed her friends.
"Killing people just isn't natural," she said. "They must have demons in their mind. Melvin knew T.J. (Terrance). He had to, they went to the same school and everyone knew T.J. I'd like to talk him and just ask, 'Why?' "
Across the street from the school is a memorial garden made of stone. Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo had it built in the weeks after the shooting.
"My sister taught at that school," he said. "We re-did Ivy Hill Park and it's beautiful. I wanted the memorial up right away so people wouldn't forget."
The memorial is well-maintain and lush now with thriving summer plants and flowers. Some grass pokes through the pavers around it, but it is clean and graffiti-free.
"There is pride in that community up there," DiVincenzo said. "That's one thing that came out of it (the shootings)."
On a mild summer night last week, the playground was full. The happy shrieks of children, most not born before Aug. 4, 2007, filled the evening. All those children, all those futures. But you look at those kids and wonder, "How many?"
Across the street, behind Mount Vernon School, there is also a new playground and running track. But it is empty. The gates that lead to the back lots of the school stay locked.
Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.
The Newark police division 5th Precinct station and city Public Safety Department headquarters (Google Maps) 
