A South Jersey teenager who initially told police he had been shot in the chest Saturday night by a masked suspect was actually shot by another teenager who was playing with a gun, police said on Sunday.
Mount Laurel Police Lt. Stephen Riedener, a police spokesman, said in a news release that police were called to a house on Marne Highway near Hartford Road about 11:15 p.m. Saturday for the report of a man shot. When they arrived, they found a 17-year-old boy with a gunshot wound to the chest.
The teen initially told officers he was sitting on the porch when a masked suspect approached and shot him, police said. But officers who were searching the area for that suspect tracked down two more teens who were on foot in the immediate area, authorities said. One of those teens is identified as 18-year-old Kurtis M. Cercone, of Mount Laurel, and the other, a juvenile whose identity has not been released, is a 17-year-old boy from Trenton.
Investigators eventually determined that Cercone and the other teen had been with the victim inside his house and were "handling a handgun that the two had brought with them." The gun went off by accident, police said, and the teen was wounded in his chest.
The two teens then fled the house before police arrived. When officers caught up with them and began to investigate, police said, they eventually found two handguns in Cercone's car, which was parked in a nearby lot. Cercone was charged with possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and unlawful possession of a firearm, and he was committed to Burlington County Jail in lieu of $50,000 cash bail, police said.
The 17-year-old boy from Trenton was charged with aggravated assault and gun possession. He was being held at Burlington County Juvenile Detention Center on Sunday.
The teen boy who was wounded is hospitalized at Cooper University Hospital and his injuries are not life-threatening, police said.
