2 Killed, 6 Injured in Shooting Near Rutgers University (Published 2020)

Video obtained by The New York Times shows four men arriving at the scene in a car and shooting into the area.

Two people were killed and six others wounded in a shooting early on Sunday morning that took place blocks away from the Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick, N.J., the authorities said.

It was not immediately clear what led to the violence, but it did not involve students from the university, according to a statement from the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.

A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office declined to answer further questions about the shooting, which took place around 1:30 a.m. on Delafield Street. People who live on the street said that the shooting appeared to be connected to a party at a home on that block.

A home security video obtained by The New York Times from a resident in the area, which captured part of the shooting, shows a car approaching slowly on Delafield Street before stopping in the middle of the road. Four men quickly exit the car, pull out guns and start shooting into an area that’s not captured on the video.

At least one of the men appears to then hide for cover near the porch of a nearby home. The encounter, which lasts less than 30 seconds, ends when the men run back to the car and speed away.

The two people who were killed — both male — were pronounced dead at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, according to the prosecutor’s office. A spokeswoman for the hospital referred questions about the victims to the New Brunswick Police Department, which is investigating the shooting.

Names and other details about the victims were not immediately released. The New Brunswick Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday morning.

Rutgers University sent an alert about the shooting to students around 2:30 a.m. advising them to stay away from the area.

The fall semester at the New Brunswick campus began this month, but a majority of classes are being held remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic. A limited number of graduate and international students have been allowed to live on campus.

A spokesman for the school referred questions to the prosecutor’s office and the New Brunswick police.

Several Rutgers students, some of whom said they had signed leases before the pandemic, live on the block.

One of those students, Jacob Beacher, 20, had moved into his home in June. He said he was sitting in an upstairs bedroom when the gunfire broke out early Sunday. It lasted about 10 to 15 seconds, he said.

“People were just shot laying on the sidewalk,” he said.

He said the gunmen appeared to be firing toward a house where a neighbor was holding a party. After the gunfire, Mr. Beacher said he went out to try to help, but one of the victims appeared to be in dire condition and was bleeding from the mouth.

“I just tried to stay there with him, to let him know there was someone there, there was someone trying to help him,” he said.

As soon as the police and emergency medical workers showed up, Mr. Beacher said that the scene turned chaotic, with as many as 200 people pouring into the street.

Matt Irving, 18, a sophomore at Rutgers who also lives on the street, said people were “running everywhere.”

“There’s a lot of screaming, there’s people yelling for ambulances and stuff,” Mr. Irving said. “And there’s like a huge party in there right before, too. So there’s people scrambling. Everywhere, it was just chaos.”

On Sunday afternoon, police tape still blocked off a section of Delafield Street as officers hosed down the sidewalk and the pavement.