Moments before an Essex County sheriff’s detective killed an unarmed DeFarra Gaymon in Newark’s Branch Brook Park, he was involved in another public lewdness arrest that also turned violent.
“I believe there was a struggle because that’s how he lost his handcuffs,” said a spokesperson for the Essex County prosecutor’s office when providing details of the July 16, 2010 killing.
Edward Esposito, the detective, was in plain clothes and had made an arrest in the park while investigating “public sexual activity.” He and his partner placed that male suspect in their car. According to the prosecutor’s office, that first arrest came at 5:39 pm. The prosecutor could not say if that time was recorded at the moment the man was placed in the car, immediately before or after the struggle occurred, or at some other point.
Esposito then returned to the park to retrieve the handcuffs. As he was bending down to pick them up, Esposito, now 30, was approached by Gaymon, 48, “who was engaged in a sex act at the time,” according to a June 28 statement from the prosecutor’s office.
Esposito identified himself and tried to arrest Gaymon, who resisted and fled. Esposito called his partner on his cell phone –– he was not carrying a radio –– to say he was chasing a man.
“At 6:03, he called his partner to let him know he was in a foot chase with Mr. Gaymon,” the spokesperson told Gay City News.
The June 28 statement said that Gaymon made repeated threats to kill Esposito and “then lunged at and attempted to disarm the officer while reaching into his own pocket. Fearing for his life, the officer discharged his service weapon, hitting Mr. Gaymon once,” the statement said.
6:04, Esposito used his cell phone to call the sheriff’s office central dispatch to request medical assistance and report he had been involved in a shooting.
Calls to central dispatch are recorded, and the Newark Star-Ledger reported Esposito saying, “Let me see your hands. Let me see your hands. Come on, I’m trying to get you help” on what is likely the 6:04 or a subsequent 6:05 call.
The prosecutor’s spokesperson said police procedure required Esposito to first handcuff Gaymon if he believed he was a threat. That call suggests that Esposito had not done that. The spokesperson could not say if Esposito still had his gun trained on Gaymon during that call. Esposito made the second call to central dispatch, and he called his partner at 6:06.
An ambulance arrived on the scene at 6:19. Gaymon was taken to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead at 9:00 pm. Neither the first suspect nor Esposito’s partner heard the gun shot. The first suspect was interviewed, but “he really didn’t hear or see anything,” the spokesperson said.
On June 28, the Essex County prosecutor’s office announced that a grand jury declined to indict Esposito in the 2010 killing. Esposito appears to have a history of public sex sting arrests that turn violent.
Documents obtained by Garden State Equality, New Jersey’s gay rights lobby, suggest that Esposito was involved in at least three other public sex arrests that turned violent, with all three happening in 2009. In another two incidents in 2009 and 2010, resisting arrest was charged along with either lewdness or criminal sexual contact. Altogether, the records indicate that Esposito was involved in at least 19 public sex sting arrests in Essex County parks.
