WILLINGBORO, NJ – A Willingboro man has pleaded guilty to the fatal shooting of a woman three years ago inside her Maple Shade apartment, according to Burlington County Prosecutor LaChia L. Bradshaw.
Semaj T. Pittman, 23, pleaded guilty to one count of Aggravated Manslaughter (First Degree) in Superior Court in Mount Holly on April 28 in exchange for a 25-year term in state prison. The Hon. Christopher J. Garrenger scheduled sentencing for June 30.
On February 23, 2020, officers from the Maple Shade Police Department were called to The Arbors apartment complex on Lenola Road for a report of a shooting. They found a man and a woman with gunshot wounds. Both were transported to Cooper University Medical Center in Camden, where the woman, 22-year-old Kayla Winkler, was pronounced dead.
Her boyfriend, Ramek Bass of Philadelphia, who was 24 at the time, was treated for a gunshot wound to the shoulder.
According to the investigation, Pittman and a juvenile teenager went to the apartment to rob Winkler and Bass, with whom they were acquainted. After they were allowed inside, Pittman pulled a gun and shot the victims as they tried to leave the apartment.
The teenager, an Evesham Township resident, pleaded guilty last year to Murder (First Degree), and under New Jersey law, his name must be withheld because he was a juvenile at the time the offense was committed.
