Teen gang members who kill police officers will be tried as adults, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba said Thursday.
"This is really the way it should be. If you shoot a police officer, if you shoot anyone, I don't care what your age is, if you are part of a gang and have a repeated history of crime, you will be tried as an adult," Habba said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends" after she filed paperwork to try a 14-year-old boy as an adult after he allegedly shot and killed Newark Sgt. Joseph Azcona.
The teen was initially charged with murder, attempted murder, and possession of illegal weapons.
The slain officer, 26, was part of a team of Newark police detectives and federal agents that had gone to capture a suspect in an illegal weapons sting when the officer was fired on in his vehicle, authorities said.
"He didn't even get a chance to step out of the vehicle before he was struck," Emanuel Miranda, Newark's director of public safety, told a Saturday morning news conference with Newark's mayor and top prosecutor.