Two young teens were shot to death in Newark and a third was critically wounded Wednesday night.
A 13-year-old girl and 14-year-old boy were killed when bullets started flying on Schley Street in the city’s South Ward, according to Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn A. Murray.
A relative of the two slain children said they were innocent victims.
“They weren’t the intended targets,” the woman said outside University Hospital Thursday morning. “It was an accident.”
The distraught woman said that she heard the shots. She would not elaborate on what she believed the killer’s motive might have been.
The third victim was being treated at the hospital. The age and gender of that teen was not immediately released.
The names of all three victims were also withheld.
The girl was pronounced dead at 10:38 p.m., the boy shortly afterward, according to Newark Police Director Samuel A. DeMaio.
The shootings came less than 24 hours after three men were fatally shot during a Christmas-morning fight at a strip club in nearby Irvington.
That violence occurred when a man entered Slick’s Go-Go shortly after midnight and shot the manager and bouncer dead.