Officials: Councilmember fatally shot

>> Eunice K. Dwumfour, a 30-yearold councilmember serving her first term in Sayreville, New Jersey, was fatally shot Wednesday night, officials said.

Officers with the Sayreville Police Department responded to reports of a shooting at 7:22 p.m. in Parlin, an unincorporated area of Sayreville, and found Dwumfour in her car with multiple gunshot wounds, according to a statement by the Middlesex County prosecutor's office. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The shooting took place at Camelot at La Mer, a complex of neatly kept threestory apartment buildings and duplex homes that backs up against the Garden State Parkway. Thursday morning, investigators were searching a wooded hill near the parkway.

Dwumfour was found in a white vehicle, which had rolled down the avenue's steep incline before crashing into two cars at the bottom of the hill, according to police officers at the scene. Authorities did not say whether there was a suspect in the crime. An investigation is ongoing.

Victoria Kilpatrick, the mayor of Sayreville, said in a statement that “the fact that she was taken from us by a despicable criminal act makes this incident all the more horrifying.”

Sayreville, with a population of about 45,000 people, is in Middlesex County, about 30 miles south of Manhattan.

Kennedy O'Brien, a Republican who served as mayor of Sayreville for two decades, described Dwumfour as the embodiment of the American dream. Her roots were in Ghana, he said, but she had forged a success story that took her from Newark to suburban central New Jersey.

She remained active in her church in Newark, he said, and was “deeply faithful.”