Prosecutors are filing murder charges against Markquice "Tank" Thomas, who was already charged with attempted murder for shooting Gaines.
TRENTON - A 45-year-old city man shot and paralyzed March 9 near a makeshift memorial for another man killed the day before has died.
Joseph "Power God" Gaines died early this morning at Capital Health Regional Medical Center in Trenton, the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office confirmed.
New charges will probably be filed by the end of the day against Markquice "Tank" Thomas, a 28-year-old Trenton resident arrested one week later and charged with attempted murder and weapons offenses.
"We're in the process of filing a murder charge," said Casey DeBlasio, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office.
Gaines was arrested numerous times in the late 1990s and early 2000s for drug dealing and related offenses and spent time in prison. However, state officials and The College of New Jersey believed he was rehabilitated enough to hire him as a paid outreach worker for the new Trenton Violence Reduction Strategy.
It was his role in that program, which began just seven weeks ago, that brought state acting Attorney General John Hoffman and Trenton Police Director Ralph Rivera Jr. to Gaines' hospital bedside the day after he was shot.
The police department's rank and file were "livid" about the visit, the police union president said, but the Attorney General's Office said Gaines' past gave him credibility with the young people TVRS is trying to deter from a life of crime.
The murder of Charles "X" White on March 8 inside an illegal after-hours club just feet from where Gaines was shot while in a parked SUV remains under investigation. White and Gaines were friends and occasional business partners, a retired police captain said, but any connection between the deaths of the two men remains unclear.
Thomas does not face any charges in White's killing, and police have not identified any suspects in the death.
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