Shiquan Bellamy is on trial for the murders of Michael Muchioki and Nia Haqq (above). (The Jersey Journal /Landov)
Shiquan Bellamy (inset) is on trial for the murders of Michael Muchioki and Nia Haqq. (
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Who is Shiquan Bellamy? Why is it unlikely that you never heard of him?
1) Following last week’s selection of a jury, the double-murder trial of Bellamy, now 21, was scheduled to begin. He’s charged with the robberies and execution murders of 25-year-old Nia Haqq and Michael Muchioki, 27, after the couple’s engagement party in April, 2010.
Bellamy also is charged with the March, 2010 murder of Lamonte Wright, 20, who was shot in the back while walking his girlfriend to her car.
He’s also charged in the February, 2010 murders of Lester Thomson, 26, and Mileak Richardson, 17 — both shot in the head.
Latonia Bellamy, the defendant’s 21-year-old cousin, has already been sentenced to life in the murder/robberies of the engaged couple.
2) So why is it unlikely that we’ve never heard of Shiquan Bellamy? Perhaps the five murders on three days over eight weeks occurred in Pittsburgh or Spokane?
Nope, they all went down — and is now being adjudicated — in Jersey City, walking distance from Manhattan, if one were allowed to walk the Holland Tunnel.
The trial of Shiquan Bellamy should be making big, steady news here. Instead, outside of Hudson County’s shrinking Jersey Journal, it makes none.
And sadly, sorrowfully, we should get used to that.
Daily, regional newspapers are receding then disappearing as economic impossibilities, the responsibility to investigate and report hard, local news has shifted to our local TV stations and their news departments.
Forget about it.
We haven’t a chance. Our local newscasts have no head for such matters. Worse, to exhibit a nose for real news could cost a news director his or her job.
Weather? All you want. Five times per newscast. Heck, if it’s going to be 28 degrees in February, that’s the lead story. Bundle up!
Footage easily and cheaply taken off satellites and from other video sources (now including YouTube) then presented as news? Plenty. We have as good a chance to see an elephant kicking a soccer ball in Istanbul as we would a probe of a crooked Brooklyn politician.
Helicopters? They’ve all got News Chopper Ones, Twos and Fives. Breaking news: See that, down there? That’s a fire in a vacant lot in Queens. Neat, huh?
Network promotion? Every local newscast is now charged with serving as the pregame or postgame show for what’s on later and what happened earlier on “Dancing With the Survivor Idols Biggest X-Factored Talent Loser.” There’s not even enough shame left to feel.
And so the trial of Shiquan Bellamy, charged with the murders of five young people when he was only 18, proceeds as if were happening in a faraway place, a place where it’s no doubt being heavily covered by local TV news reporters.
This was an 18-year-old accused of executing five people on three occasions over eight weeks — right here — and that’s still not news enough to make news.
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My one personal and professional experience with the TSA found it to be more eager to treat airport security as a public-relations problem than a security problem.
In fact, the TSA seemed more inclined to discredit me as a tabloid sensationalist than to take a good look at the Newark Airport breach I suspected and may have, in fact, detected.
But its recent easement of carry-on restrictions to allow small, sharp and pointy objects, such as pocket knives — tools designed to cut — defies the fundamental rules seen within what real reality TV shows display about prison living.
The TSA now allows what prison guards sternly and broadly identify as “shanks.” Shanks must be detected and confiscated because inmates so often use them to slice someone’s throat — a guard’s, an inmate’s — and in an instant.
Oh, well, it’s not as if such murderous types would be inclined to board an airplane.