NEWARK — Less than two weeks ago, Cheyanne Bond stood in a bright orange cap and gown, smiling broadly for the camera with a friend as she showed off her diploma from Newark's Malcolm X Shabazz High School.
Come summer’s end, she’d have been heading off to college to study nursing, her family said.
Instead, the 17-year-old girl is another grim statistic in a bloody start to summer for New Jersey’s largest city.
Cheyanne, known to her friends as Shay, was shot and killed on South 17th Street near West Side Park as she walked with a teenage boy Sunday night. The boy, also 17, survived the attack. He remained at University Hospital today for treatment of gunshot wounds, authorities said.
The slaying marked the third homicide in less than 24 hours in Newark. Two people died of gunshot wounds in separate shootings late Saturday and early Sunday.
"Ten days, man. Ten days ago she was a happy young girl just ready to live her life and graduate from high school," Shabazz Principal Gemar Mills said this afternoon. "Good kid. Quiet kid. Fun kid."
Authorities have not released a motive in the killing, though they said robbery has not been ruled out. The search for the shooter or shooters continued last night.
"We’re seeing too much tragic loss of young life," acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray said today after surveying the crime scene with her chief of detectives, Anthony Ambrose.
Murray called it "troubling" that the shooting happened near the park, an area where people congregate and where others might have been hit.
Cheyanne Bond, right, and a classmate at her graduation June 20 from Malcolm X Shabazz High School.
Cheyanne and her companion, whose name was not released, were struck at about 9:45 p.m. outside a multifamily home with security cameras framing the front door.
One neighbor said the street, which runs along the park, has been plagued with gangs and drug dealers. Others said the park is a popular haunt for teens after dark.
Cheyanne, who lived with her legal guardian, Samera Newsome, just over the Newark border in Irvington, walked out of her house at 6 p.m. Sunday, saying she was going to visit her cousin.
Newsome told her not to be late or she’d miss the Black Entertainment Television Awards.
"She said, ‘Ok.’ She never came back," a distraught Newsome recalled this afternoon. "Maybe I shouldn’t have let her go. I don’t know."
Newsome, who was appointed Cheyanne’s legal guardian when her mother died a decade ago, called the teen a "phenomenal person" who was excited to begin classes in the fall at Union County College.
"An angel and definitely a blessing," Newsome said. "Just a normal teenager living her life."
Newsome and the slain teen’s cousins, Rashida Williams and Darnella Williams, called Cheyanne respectful and quiet, a homebody who wasn’t in trouble and wasn’t in a gang. At Shabazz, she was a member of the cheerleading squad, they said.
Cheyanne’s father lives in Newark, the family said. Though she didn’t reside with him full-time, she apparently used his address to attend Newark schools.
Mills, the principal, thumbed through the girl’s college applications today after hearing the news. Benedict College in South Carolina. Essex County College. Virginia Union University. And Union County College.
"She had her friends, she loved to laugh, she loved to be at school," he said. "Like, she came consistently. She was quiet. She wasn’t a real loud, rowdy type of girl. Not at all. All I remember is her always smiling. Never disrespectful. Never trying to get over. Doing her part. You ask her to go to class, she quietly goes to class."
Anyone with information about the shooting that killed Cheyanne is asked to call the Essex County Prosecutor’s tip line at (877) 847-7432 or the Newark Police Department tip line at (877) 695-8477.
Whatever the motive, Mills said the streets were claiming too many teens.
"We want to believe that the streets are safe and that if the students are out there at a reasonable hour, that they should be OK," he said. "But the reality is that it isn’t."
Star-Ledger staff writers Mark Mueller, Matthew Stanmyre and Lisa Rose contributed to this report.
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