LONG BRANCH – A local man pled guilty to charges that he murdered a man and threatened his ex-girlfriend with a gun while her five-year-old child was near.
According to police reports, Miguel Camara, 42, of Long Branch went into the Bom DMais restaurant on Aug. 21, 2018. He went up to the table where his ex-girlfriend Fernanda Silva was seated with her two children and Marco Moreira, 45, also of Long Branch.
The Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office said Camara threw a court document on the table and pulled out a handgun and shot Moreira. Silva’s 18-year-old son fought Camara for the gun. During this struggle, he fired the gun at Silva twice and missed both times. Her other child, a 5-year-old girl, was a few feet away.
Long Branch Police Officer George Samol was flagged down by a motorist on Broadway, who told him there was a fight inside and that shots had been fired.
When Samol saw Camara holding the gun during the fight, he aimed his service weapon and ordered Camara to drop his. At this point, the 18-year-old managed to get the gun away from Camara. Camara then grabbed for Samol’s weapon. Samol was able to wrestle the gun away from Camara.
Additional officers arrived to help secure the area and Moreira was pronounced dead at the scene.
Camara pled guilty to first degree Murder, first degree Attempted Murder, and third degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child. He is scheduled for sentencing on Sept. 11. Under the terms of the plea agreement, the prosecutor is seeking a 30-year sentence without parole for the murder; a 10-year prison sentence on the Attempted Murder charge, subject to the provisions of the No Early Release Act, requiring Camara serve 85 percent of the sentence before he is eligible for parole and 5 years in prison for the Endangering the Welfare of a Child. All charges are to run consecutive to one another for an aggregate 45 years in prison and 38½ years of parole ineligibility. He would also be under parole supervision for five years following his release from state prison and would face deportation back to his home country of Portugal.
