NEWS

Police: Girl gunned down Camden teen

Jim Walsh, and Phaedra Trethan
The Courier-Post
Nathaniel Plummer, 13, was fatally shot near his grandmother's Camden home Jan. 7. A 17-year-old girl has been charged in his killing.

CAMDEN - A 17-year-old girl is accused of fatally shooting a fellow teen on an East Camden street earlier this month.

The girl, whose name authorities withheld because she is a juvenile, is charged with the murder of Nate Plummer Jr., a 13-year-old gunned down late Jan. 7 in the 2900 block of Line Street, the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office said Wednesday.

The girl has been in custody since Jan. 9, when she surrendered to Camden County police in connection with an Oct. 30 shooting in East Camden. In that incident, a 19-year-old man was wounded near 27th and Stevens streets around 1:15 p.m., the prosecutor's office said.

Authorities said ballistic evidence linked the two shootings, which occurred about a half-mile apart.

Nate's mother, Taisha Mercado, disclosed the development in a post on her Facebook page Tuesday night.

Mom heard shots that killed Camden teen

"Justice has been served!!! Nate’s (murderer) has been charged,” she wrote. The post offered no details about the suspect or the slaying.

"Some (people) asked how I can be so strong through all this," the mother wrote. "I tell them my strength comes (from) the Lord."

A memorial for Nate Plummer Jr., a 13-year-old gunned down on Jan. 7th in the 2900 block of Line Street in Camden, is seen near the murder scene on Wednesday.  A 17-year-old girl is accused of fatally shooting Plummer.

Mercado has said her son, who attended Octavius Catto Community School in East Camden, was walking to his grandmother’s house at the time of the shooting.

The day after the shooting, Mercado said she heard the gunshots that killed her son, but police on the scene initially told her it couldn't be him. Plummer, who was shot around 11:15 p.m., died shortly after midnight Jan. 8 at a city hospital.

"I went outside and asked the officers while they were putting yellow tape up who had gotten shot," the Camden woman told the Courier-Post earlier this month.

"They said all they knew was that it was a female."

When detectives came back to the house and began asking her for a description of 13-year-old Nathaniel Plummer Jr., what he was wearing and who he might be with, she said, "That's when I knew, something wasn't right."

The mother has also recounted the last weeks of her son's life as a turbulent period, as she tried to help the youth escape the influence of the city’s gangs.

Camden mourns another youth lost to violence

On the day of Nate’s death, Mercado learned that her son had been accepted into a behavioral health program and that the family would receive financial assistance in moving from a Camden home that had been riddled with bullets in a Dec. 10 attack.

Plummer is the city’s only homicide victim so far this year.

The girl also has been charged with multiple offenses in connection with the October shooting, including attempted murder and aggravated assault. The prosecutor's office said ballistic evidence aided detectives in linking the suspect to both shootings in which the girl is being held.