More Arrests Possible in College Student's Slaying

A fourth person may still be at-large in the June killing of a 19-year-old Livingston resident.

Ali Muhammad Brown, 29, of Seattle, Wash., and Jeremy Villagran, 19, and Eric Williams, 18, both of West Orange, each pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges related to the June 25 slaying of Brendan Tevlin, a Seton Hall Prep grad who had just completed his first year at the University of Richmond.

However, Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray referred to a fourth person being involved in the killing on Northfield Avenue in West Orange when she announced the arrests at a Monday press conference, according to NJ.com.

“There may be a fourth person at-large,” Katherine Carter, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, wrote in an email to NJ.com.

Carter on Thursday told Patch, “there is no new information.”

“The investigation is active and ongoing and others may or may not be charged,” Carter wrote in an email.

Whether a fourth person was at the scene that night is the latest twist in the tragic killing that was initially categorized by the prosecutor’s office as a targeted attack due to the brutality involved. It was a characterization Tevlin’s mother, Allison, has called “entirely untrue,” NJ.com reported.

A total of 10 shots were fired with eight of them striking Tevlin inside his family’s SUV in an apparent random robbery while he was stopped at a traffic light at the intersection of Northfield Avenue and Walker Road, the prosecutor’s office said.

Brown, the accused trigger man, is a registered sex offender who may be extradited to Washington and face to death penalty for allegedly killing two gay men in Seattle just weeks before the West Orange shooting.

Brown, who also faces charges for an alleged armed carjacking attempt in Point Pleasant Beach days after Tevlin’s death, is now also a suspect in an armed robbery in West Orange where the victim was alleged stuffed in the trunk of his car.

Brown was arrested weeks later in the nearby woods where he had set up a makeshift camp site.

The two other defendants are also facing other charges. Villagran has been jailed since July 9 on an aggravated assault charge stemming from a Newark shooting and Williams was out on bail at the time of Tevlin’s killing after posting bail for an alleged robbery and assault in May in West Orange.

Brown is being held on $5 million bail and Villagran and Williams are each remanded on $1 million bail.