Officer William Brey, 32, an eight-year veteran of the force, collapsed outside the Amos rowhouse on 46th Street near Westfield Avenue and died later of three stab wounds to the chest. The house is in a tree-lined working-class neighborhood with blooming azaleas in front of many of the rowhouses and children's toys on the sidewalk.
Steven Amos, who was listed in serious condition at Cooper Hospital- University Medical Center, has been charged with murder under juvenile statutes, although the Camden County prosecutor's office will seek to try him as an adult, according to George Kerns, spokesman for Prosecutor Samuel Asbell.
However, Kerns said New Jersey exempts Amos from the death penalty because he is a juvenile.
Friday's tragedy had its foreshadowings. Four years ago, Bellak was standing in the small fenced-in cement patio behind her home. Across the alley is the Amos home.
"Steven threw a soda bottle at me and almost hit my head," Bellak said yesterday. "One day I saw him throw a cat from the second floor.
"Their mother would go to work and they would curse her - oh, such terrible language," Bellak said. "And I remember one day they threw their father's clothes out the window, and when he went out they locked him out."
The parents of the Amos brothers are separated and neither could be reached for comment. The boys lived with their mother, Janet. The address of the father, William, was not immediately established. An older brother of the teen-agers was in the armed forces, neighbors said.
Before Bellak retired from her job as a donut maker, she would leave the house at 4 a.m. and many times she watched the Amos boys returning home with armloads of bread and other food. Bellak said she assumed they were stolen.
"Why else would they be coming back at 4 in the morning?" she said. "I never reported what I saw because I was afraid they would beat me up."
