Charges against suspect dropped in Newark teen girl’s murder

Charges have been dropped against the murder suspect accused of fatally shooting 17-year-old Cheyanne Bond weeks after her graduation during an attempted Iphone robbery, reports nj.com.

The charges against Andre Fields, 32, were “administratively dismissed” on May 6 in connection with the June 29, 2014 killing of Cheyanne Bond, court records show.

The website reports that Thomas Fennelly, Essex County chief assistant prosecutor, said the charges were dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning they could be reinstated.

Fennelly declined to comment on why the charges were dismissed and no other arrests have been made in Bond’s murder. He said the investigation is ongoing.

The website for the prosecutor’s office indicates that charges may be administratively dismissed, because of “the insufficiency of credible evidence.”

“A complaint may be administratively dismissed for several reasons,” the website states. “Chief among these reasons is the insufficiency of credible evidence.”

In the initial arrest on August 4, 2014 prosecutors claimed he and an unidentified accomplice confronted Bond and a 17-year-old male friend as they were walking on the 500 block of South 17th Street in Newark.

The two assailants attempted to rob the teenagers of an iPhone, and both of them were shot, prosecutors said. Bond was pronounced dead shortly after police arrived at the scene at 9:45 p.m., prosecutors said. The other victim survived his injuries, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors announced Fields’s arrest during the same press conference when they announced the arrests of three men in the unrelated killing of Livingston resident Brendan Tevlin.

A recent graduate of Malcolm X Shabazz High School in Newark, Bond planned to attend college to study nursing. Bond was an Irvington resident and a member of her high school’s cheerleading squad.