Man and Youth Held in Killings of 3 in Newark
By KAREEM FAHIM and ANDREW JACOBS

NEWARK, Aug. 9 — In a day of dramatic turns that included the surrender of one suspect to the mayor himself, the authorities announced on Thursday that a 15-year-old youth and a 28-year-old construction worker had been arrested in the murder of three young people and the wounding of a fourth in an episode that has unsettled this crime-hardened city.

At least three other suspects — two of whom were described as also being juveniles — were still being sought, the authorities said, including one juvenile who is possibly a relative of the 15-year-old suspect.

The four victims, two of them college students and two who were scheduled to begin in the fall, were shot on Saturday night in the playground of the Mount Vernon elementary school,where they had been listening to music. The authorities say robbery appeared to be the motive.

Mayor Cory A. Booker, who announced the arrests in news conferences barely an hour apart, described the 28-year-old, Jose Carranza, as “the principal suspect,” although officials said they had not yet worked out the relationship between the suspects.

At first glance, the two men held in the killings would seem to be odd collaborators. One was described as a fragile teenager who played basketball and once attended the very school where the shooting took place, and the other, by many accounts, was a troubled man with a steadily lengthening criminal record.


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Mr. Booker said the 15-year-old, from Newark, was arrested late on Wednesday night.

Mr. Carranza, of nearby Orange, surrendered early Thursday afternoon, but only after his lawyer called a mayoral aide — while Mr. Booker and others were holding a news conference about the 15-year-old’s arrest — to alert them that Mr. Carranza wanted to give himself up to the mayor at a police station. The news conference was quickly ended, and, without telling reporters, Mr. Booker rushed to the police station on Franklin Street and waited for Mr. Carranza and his lawyer.