A 27-year-old man has been charged with two counts of attempted homicide in a shooting outside a hip-hop concert at a popular New Jersey venue that critically injured two young men and caused panic among the crowd earlier this week, police say.
Quran Powell of Holmdel was arrested Thursday in East Orange and is also charged with weapons charges in the shooting outside the PNC Bank Arts Center on Monday.
Police allege that Powell was the gunman who opened fire outside the venue where rappers Big Sean and J.Cole were performing, injuring two men, 23 and 24. The gunfire also caused panic among the crowd.
Eighteen-year-old Omayma Bougdour told the Daily News that gunfire began after an argument broke out in the parking lot. She says "everyone started sprinting and stampeding."
One of the men was "not responsive," and the other was breathing heavily and begging for a drink of water, she said.
Another witness, Mike Lefanto, told the newspaper he was walking to his car with his 13-year-old daughter when he saw the two victims speaking to a woman in the parking lot, "talking about her body." He said a man soon approached the victims and fired about seven shots.
"He took those two dudes out right away," Lefanto said. "It looked like he knew what he was doing."
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State troopers, using K-9 units and a helicopter, scoured a wooded area near the amphitheater immediately after the shooting to no avail.
After identifying Powell as a suspect, police say the executed a search warrant on his home. He wasn't there, but they learned that he was allegedly hiding at an apartment in East Orange. He was arrested there without incident.
He's being held at the Monmouth County Jail in lieu of $750,000 bail. It's not clear if he has an attorney.
Big Sean and J. Cole are touring together. They perform at Madison Square Garden in New York Tuesday.
