Former Rutgers Basketball Player Charged In Mexico Murder

BERKELEY HEIGHTS, NJ —A man who was once a basketball standout for Gov. Livingston High School in Berkeley Heights, and who played one season at Rutgers, is charged with the Feb. 10 murder of a woman in Mexico.

The man is Logan Matthew Kelly, 26, a Mountainside native who graduated from Gov. Livingston in 2012. Law enforcement authorities in Mexico said he approached the 19-year-old woman from behind at a Tijuana hotel and cut her throat with a knife.

The Attorney General for the state of Baja, Mexico announced his arrest on Facebook. At 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 10, Kelly was inside a hotel in the northern area of Tijuana when he approached the woman from behind and slit her throat with a knife.

"When without mediating words approached the victim, (name redacted) 19-year-old, and with a black knife wounded her neck injury, leaving her lying on the floor, causing her to be lost of the life," said Baja state prosecutor Hiram Sanchez Zamora in a translated version.

Kelly ran from the scene but was chased and detained by a security guard; he was arrested on site by Mexican police and is charged with murder, said the prosecutor. He will remain in jail in Mexico until trial.

The San Diego Union Tribune, which first reported the story, said the young woman worked as an employee for Adelita’s night club, a strip club in Tijuana. A graphic video circulated by Mexican media outlets on Twitter shows a man approach the woman from behind, cut her throat and then run while she collapses to the floor. Other women who worked at Adelita's are seen running and screaming.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of State confirmed to Patch that Kelly was arrested.

"We are aware of the case," said the spokesperson. "When a U.S. citizen is detained abroad, the State Department provides all appropriate consular assistance. Due to privacy considerations, we do not have any information to share publicly at this time."

A spokesman for Rutgers said that Kelly was a member of the Rutgers University men’s basketball team during the 2012-13 season and left the program before the 2013-14 season. His real prowess on the basketball court was at Gov. Livingston High School, where Kelly was the school's all-time leading basketball scorer with 1,324 career points, TAP Into reported.

After Rutgers, he played for the University of Montevallo in Alabama, a Division II program, according to their team roster.

The San Diego Union Tribune reported Kelly was most recently living in Ohio.

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