A Republican member of a local government in New Jersey was shot and killed in her car Wednesday night.
Officials said Eunice Dwumfour, an elected councilor in the borough of Sayreville, was found dead in her car with multiple gunshot wounds around 7:20 p.m., NJ.com reported.
Police said they believed Dwumfour to be the target of the shooting, but any possible motive has not yet been made public in the ongoing investigation, WABC reported.
A witness told the New York Post that her white SUV continued rolling after she was shot and crashed into two parked cars.
The shooting took place outside the luxury rental complex where Dwumfour lived, near a road called Samuel Circle, NJ.com reported. A neighbor, Alexandra Bryan, told the New York Times the residential complex was “really nice.”
“Children are able to play around without parents. It’s always quiet,” she said. “That’s why it’s such a shock to everybody.”
Footage posted on social media showed emergency responders at the scene preparing Dwumfour’s car to be towed away.
Dwumfour, 30, was serving her first term as a councilor in Sayreville, a borough of about 45,000 people about 30 miles south of Manhattan. A newcomer to politics, she unseated a Democratic opponent when she was elected in 2021, according to Tapinto.net.
Sayreville Mayor Victoria Kilpatrick said she “can’t adequately express my feeling of sorrow at the loss of a friend.”
“The fact that she was taken from us by a despicable criminal act makes this incident all the more horrifying,” Kilpatrick said. “Beyond her dedication to our community, I can share that she was a woman of deep faith and worked hard to integrate her strong Christian beliefs into her daily life as a person and a community leader.”
This was a breaking news story. The details were periodically updated as more information became available.