Route 50 and Third Street is a block away from where I went to elementary school and middle school. I crossed that intersection more times than I could ever count growing up, past the Wawa on one corner and the gas station on the other, in a stretch of town where the speed limit never even reaches 40. When I saw the breaking news Saturday morning, I couldn’t picture it. Not there. Not at 7:30 on a Saturday morning, when that corner should have been nothing but quiet.
That Wawa used to be an A&P. My uncle managed it. My mom shopped there all the time, the way everyone in Mays Landing did. That corner has been a lifeline for this town for generations, the kind of place you pass a thousand times without ever really thinking about it, because it’s just always been there. That’s what makes this so hard to reckon with.
Two people died there this weekend. Robert Barr Jr., 54, and Alice Stilwell, 67, both of Egg Harbor Township, were killed when a stolen vehicle crashed head-on into their car at that intersection. I didn’t know them. But I know that corner, and I know this town, and I can’t stop thinking about how ordinary that Saturday morning must have felt right up until it wasn’t.
I’m angry about it too, and I don’t think that needs much explaining. Someone took a car that wasn’t theirs, and two people who had every reason to expect an ordinary morning never got to finish it. That kind of carelessness, that kind of disregard for anyone else on the road, is exactly the thing that turns a quiet town corner into the last morning of someone’s life.
SEE ALSO: Stolen car crashes head-on in Mays Landing killing 2; 4 charged
Route 50 & 3rd Mays Landing on most days | Google Maps
Four people are facing charges. I hope all four answer for it fully.
Nayshaun Brown, 18, of Atlantic City, along with three juveniles, face charges including conspiracy to commit second-degree aggravated assault, third-degree joyriding, second-degree eluding, and second-degree theft by receiving a stolen motor vehicle, according to Atlantic County Prosecutor William Reynolds. Brown is being held at the Atlantic County Justice Facility. Two of the juveniles remain in custody; a third was released by a Superior Court judge Sunday morning.
I’ll say plainly what I hope happens next. I hope every one of them, including the juveniles, is charged and tried as an adult. Two people lost their lives. Whatever led up to that morning, the consequences should match what actually happened, not what age is printed on someone’s ID.
Prosecutors say the vehicle had been stolen roughly 16 miles away in Longport. State law requires the Attorney General’s Office to review any death that occurs during an encounter with law enforcement, which is simply the standard process here, nothing more. Prosecutor Reynolds also repeated a message worth hearing again: lock your car at night, and keep your key fobs inside the house.
What I actually want to say
I don’t have anything clever to add to this one. Two people are gone who should still be here. My hometown is grieving something it never asked to carry, and so am I, even from a distance. I hope Robert Barr Jr. and Alice Stilwell are remembered as more than a headline out of Mays Landing. And I hope, when this is all finished in a courtroom, that whoever is responsible faces every bit of what they’re responsible for.
Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 show host Eric Johnson only.
ICE arrests: ‘Worst of the worst’ in New Jersey
These are recent arrests in New Jersey by Immigration & Customs Enforcement, which labeled these immigrants as “the worst of the worst.”
Gallery Credit: New Jersey 101.5
