On the evening of October 16, 2017, 27-year-old William Roberts, a Black/African American man who lived on Church Street in Bound Brook, New Jersey, was shot near the intersection of Church Street and East Second Street, about a block from a middle school. Multiple 9-1-1 calls brought police to the scene at approximately 6:23 p.m.; Roberts suffered a gunshot wound to his torso, was taken to a nearby trauma center for emergency surgery, and later died. An autopsy found a single bullet had struck his abdominal aorta, causing fatal internal bleeding.

Investigators from the Bound Brook Police Department and the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office Major Crimes Unit treated the shooting as an isolated incident in which Roberts was believed to have been the intended target. After limited cooperation from eyewitnesses, police identified 27-year-old Michael Washington of Paterson as the primary suspect and arrested him in Bound Brook on October 31, 2017. Washington was charged with first-degree murder and two second-degree firearms offenses; after an 11-day trial a jury convicted him of first-degree aggravated manslaughter and two second-degree gun offenses. Did anyone in the area witness the shooting or have information about Roberts in the days before October 16, 2017?