1 man killed in Newark shooting; manhunt underway for suspects

NEWARK, New Jersey (WABC) -- A man was shot and killed in Newark Wednesday afternoon. Police arrived and fired their weapons at the gunmen, but the suspects remain on the loose.

The shooting happened around 4:45 p.m. near Broadway and Kearny Street in the northern section of the city.

A law enforcement source told Eyewitness News that officers from several agencies witnessed an initial shooting in the area. Following the shooting, officers were involved in a crash with the suspect's vehicle. During the ordeal, we're told police fired their weapons.

It wasn't until several hours after the shootout that Newark police discovered just how awful this could have been.

Cops rushed the house just across the street from the sprawling crime scene, where a stray bullet ripped through a family's apartment.

"It went through their bedroom window, it shot through the wall," said Natasha Santana, a neighbor.

It went out the other side, into the living room, where it bounced off the wall, and landed on the sofa.

"Everybody was home, but the bullet was so high it just missed everybody. So thank God there were infants and everything here, so everybody's fine," Santana said.

With fierce urgency, police spent hours using high power, chopper-mounted spotlights to hunt for the gunmen responsible.

Sources tell Eyewitness News Reporter Anthony Johnson it all started when two officers witnessed a double shooting and tried to stop three men from getting away in a car.

The car crashed, but the men bailed.

There was a brief shootout before officers caught one of the suspects.

The other two are the subject of a manhunt so intense it startled even crime weary residents of this gun plagued city.

"This is crazy! Helicopters, I've never seen that around here," one resident said.

"The helicopters, the police, it's just all too much," another said.

It's too much that the bullet somehow flew high enough to spare everyone in this home. Its residents were too shaken to appear on camera.

"We know Newark isn't the best place to live, but she's been here three years, I've been upstairs four years, and this is the first time anything like this happened. So it's very troublesome. It's very scary," Santana said.

The identity of the shooting victim has not yet been released.