CLIFTON, N.J. — A convicted killer who was living in Teaneck when he shot and killed a 15-year-old boy nearly two decades ago is back behind bars after Clifton police allegedly found him carrying a loaded handgun during a Route 21 traffic stop.

Zechariah Eaton, 37, served the minimum 18 years of a 22-year maximum sentence in state prison for the 2006 killing of Ricky Lee Smith Jr., records show.

He was released in March 2025.

Now he is facing new weapons charges.

It was shortly before 12:30 a.m. Wednesday when Officers Benjamin Bressel and Alexander Gell were on patrol and saw Eaton commit “multiple traffic violations” with his GMC Envoy on northbound Route 21, Clifton Police Detective Lt. Robert Anderson said.

The officers pulled Eaton over near the exit for eastbound Route 46 and immediately found him carrying a knife, Anderson said.

“A protective frisk of the vehicle for weapons revealed a Taurus .40-caliber handgun inside a fanny pack,” Anderson said.

The handgun was loaded with 15 rounds, five of them hollow points, police said.

Eaton was charged with multiple weapons offenses, including a “certain persons” offense.

The charge applies to people who are legally prohibited from possessing firearms because of certain prior convictions. For Eaton, the significance is particularly stark: His 2006 conviction for the Teaneck shooting means he is prohibited from possessing a firearm.

Eaton was also charged with possession of a high-capacity magazine and hollow-point bullets and was issued several motor vehicle summonses, Anderson said.

He was then sent to the Bergen County Jail.

Given the circumstances, he will remain held there while the state first deals with the certain-persons offense, a conviction for which carries a mandatory prison sentence in New Jersey.

But Eaton’s latest arrest brings back the story of a Teaneck teenager whose life ended in a burst of gunfire nearly 20 years ago.

It was July 9, 2006, when Ricky Lee Smith was sitting on a curb outside a party on quiet, tree-lined South Prospect Avenue.

More than 100 teenagers and young adults had gathered at the house, including about a dozen members of the Bloods from Paterson, according to authorities at the time.

As the party broke up after midnight, fights spilled into the street.

Eaton and three other Bloods members had gotten into a series of scuffles with other people.

Eaton later admitted in court that he retrieved a .357 Magnum from his car.

He fired once into the air.

Then he fired into the crowd.

The second bullet struck Ricky Lee in the back.

The boy who loved basketball, boxed at the Police Athletic League and dreamed of going to UCLA was pronounced dead a short time later at what was then Holy Name Hospital.

He was just 15.

And the gunman was not some outsider who had come into Teaneck from Paterson.

Eaton was 17 and living in Teaneck at the time of the shooting.

A Superior Court judge in Hackensack waived the case to adult court, where Eaton pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated manslaughter.

He ultimately served 18 years, 8 months and 12 days in state prison.

The killing devastated Ricky’s family and shocked a town accustomed to thinking of itself as a quiet suburban community.

At Ricky’s funeral, his mother, Pamela Johnson, stood over her son’s open coffin and struggled to comprehend the loss.

“No, God, no,” she cried. “Why did he have to kill him? Why did he have to kill my baby?”

The Rev. Lester Taylor of Community Baptist Church in Englewood delivered an angry warning about the violence and gang culture that had reached into suburban Bergen County.

“If we don't change our habits, our thinking, our ways, this won't be the last funeral,” Taylor told mourners.

Nearly 20 years later, Eaton is again facing a weapons case in Bergen County.

This time, police say, the loaded handgun was found during a traffic stop before another tragedy could occur.