A Somerset County man has been charged with being responsible for the fatal shooting of a Plainfield man outside of a restaurant in 2010, acting Union County Prosecutor Grace H. Park announced Tuesday.
Richard Culver, 26, was arrested without incident early Tuesday morning at his home on Mercer Avenue in North Plainfield.
It was approximately 2:15 a.m. on December 11, 2010 when gunshots rang out at the Kennedy Fried Chicken on East Fifth Street and Park Avenue in downtown Plainfield. Sahaad Monroe-McCoy, 25, was shot and killed while a second man, his cousin, was injured by gunfire.
An intensive joint investigation by the Union County Homicide Task Force and the Plainfield Police Division ultimately revealed that Culver, a confirmed member of the Crips street gang, was the shooter that night – he had been targeting Monroe-McCoy’s cousin, a high-ranking member of Plainfield’s G-Shine set of the Bloods street gang.
Culver has been lodged in Union County Jail, with bail set at $750,000 by state Superior Court Judge Frederic R. McDaniel.
Convictions on murder charges commonly result in penalties of 30 years to life in state prison.