Murder of Gail Shollar
Gail F. Shollar (1957–1992) was a 35-year-old Piscataway, NJ mother who was raped and murdered after being carjacked from the Middlesex Shopping Mall in South Plainfield, NJ. She was one of the first people in New Jersey to be a victim of carjacking. The first known carjacking in the United States had only occurred the previous year in Detroit with the murder of Ruth Wahl. The Crime On the evening of November 3, 1992, Gail Shollar, a mother of three children, was shopping at a mall in South Plainfield with her 3-year-old daughter, Andrea. Twenty-three-year-old, Scott Johnson, was then reported to have approached Gail from behind with a folding knife, grabbed her by the hair and pressed the knife to her neck. He then forced her to drive around for two hours. Johnson then dropped Andrea Shollar off on the lawn of The First Class Child Care Center in Piscataway, NJ. The next morning she was found crying by two workers, cold and wet from the rain. At 6:20 AM on November 4, 1992, the Piscataway police received a call from Michelle Carnavale, a teacher's assistant at the daycare, who stated how she found Andrea and that Andrea was refusing