Student Gunned Down During Robbery Near "Gun Free" Campus In New Jersey

A Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) fraternity brother at the New Jersey Institute of Technology was shot and killed in his frat house by armed robbers who apparently followed him home from the store.

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The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office identified the NJIT student shot and killed Monday morning in a fraternity house as a Freehold man.

Joseph Micalizzi was 23.

Micalizzi was shot at about 3:22 a.m. in the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity house on the 300 block of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, the prosecutor’s office said. He was pronounced dead at 5:02 a.m. at University Hospital.

Micalizzi was a junior studying mechanical engineering. He transferred to NJIT from Brookdale Community College. He lived at the fraternity house during the school year.

Police have not made any arrests and or identified any suspects.

NJIT is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the shooting.

“This is a tragic time for the student’s family, friends and the entire NJIT campus and we extend our thoughts and prayers to all affected,” NJIT President Joel Bloom said.

A woman living down the street from the fraternity house said she was good friends with Micalizzi. She did not want to be identified.

The two of them were studying until early Monday when he left to go to a local convenience store, she said. Micalizzi’s fraternity brothers said someone followed him back from the store and shot him in the fraternity house.

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Micalizzi is the second college student shot to death in less than a month in Newark.  Shani Patel was killed in an off-campus apartment in early April.

The ownership of firearms for self-defense is perversely over-regulated in New Jersey, and concealed carry is almost non-existent, and it’s fair to say that the men who robbed and murdered Micazelli had every reason to feel confident that he would be an unarmed victim.

In not entirely unrelated news, Governor Nathan Deal will either pass or veto a campus carry bill in Georgia within the next 24 hours.

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