The jury came back hung in a murder trial for Shaheed Brown, accused of shooting Enrico Smalley to death in Trenton in 2014
TRENTON - The case of a Trenton man accused of shooting another man outside of a local bar two years ago has resulted in two mistrials in less than a year.
Shaheed Brown A Mercer County jury came back hung Friday in the retrial of Shaheed Brown, a Trenton man accused of shooting Enrico Smalley, 20, to death outside of La Guriara bar in July of 2014.
It was the second time for Brown - he was initially tried for the case in the fall, which ended in a hung jury.
Much of the case has lied with the wealth of surveillance tapes that Mercer County Prosecutors entered into evidence over the past few weeks of the May retrial.
They showed tapes of Brown, wearing dreadlocks and a white shirt, walking to and entering the bar on North Clinton Avenue - and tapes of him walking away.
The shooting itself occurred just off of camera, prosecutors have said.
Surveillance videos from the street that were shown in court this month depicted a sidewalk full of people just outside the bar scattering after an off-camera incident.
Brown had walked out of the frame of the camera by the time people started scattering but the shooting itself was not shown on any videos.
In Trenton murder, no smoking gun
Joseph Itri, a detective with the state police, who initially responded to the scene that summer, said that an anonymous caller had reported driving past the shooting.
In a 911 tape the caller reported seeing one man with dreadlocks standing over another and shooting at him on the sidewalk.
Prosecutors have said that Brown left Trenton shortly after the shooting. He was arrested a month later in Newark and had cut his dreadlocks off, prosecutors said.
The jury went into deliberations last week but had several issues. At one point they came back to court, asking to rewatch all the video surveillance around the time of the shooting. The next day a juror was absent - possibly due to sickness - and an alternate juror had to be brought in.
Jurors needed to restart their deliberations following the absence, but a day later they came back hung, according to the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office.
Attorneys and prosecutors are on a gag order and are not allowed to speak about the trial.
Anna Merriman may be reached at amerriman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @anna_merriman Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.