Teen nabbed in W. Va. for Lower East Side murder tied to gang slay of young salon owner and innocent friend in burning car
A teen gunman, busted in West Virginia, was charged with a fatal Lower East Side gang shooting on a lethal night where a Chinatown nail salon owner and her innocent friend were gruesomely executed this past May, police said Wednesday.
Suspect Zymir Humphrey, 18, was arrested by U.S. marshals in Martinsburg last month and extradited Tuesday to New York on charges of murder and weapon possession in the fatal May 15 shooting of Brandon Atkinson as the violence began to escalate.
The teen was held without bail during a brief arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court. A murder indictment and a warrant for his arrest were filed on June 10 after investigators presented evidence showing he was responsible for the 21-year-old Atkinson’s death — the first incident in a hourslong spate of bloodshed, according to court papers.
This was Humphrey’s first arrest in New York and the first connected to any of the shootings and deaths linked to the case, a police source said. The suspect, who lives in the Rutgers Houses on the Lower East Side, had recently relocated to West Virginia, according to cops.
Atkinson, shot twice in the back of the head and once in the left shoulder, was found lying faceup in the street before he was taken to Bellevue Hospital and pronounced dead, a police source said. His phone was charging inside a nearby deli, and Atkinson was carrying a black bag with a loaded 9-mm. pistol inside, the source indicated.
The NYPD late last month identified two other men wanted for questioning about the murders of Nikki Huang, 23, and Jesse Parrilla, 22. Those suspects, Jahmel Sanders, 30, and Steven Santiago, 34, remain on the loose.
The charred bodies of Huang and Jesse Parrilla were found inside a burned-out car parked near the Pelham Split Rock Golf Course in the Bronx, with both victims shot in the head.
Cops believe Parrilla, a talented basketball player, was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and was killed only because of his friendship with Huang.
Detectives later determined the double murder capped a series of retaliatory acts of violence after Huang, a nail salon owner, was pistol-whipped and robbed of her pricey Louis Vuitton purse on the Lower East Side. She then reached out to friends in the local Up the Hill gang, whose members sought revenge on Huang’s attackers in the rival Down the Hill Gang.
Retribution was swift and started with Atkinson, police sources said. Though Atkinson was not involved in the Huang robbery, his half-brother is an elder statesman in the Down the Hill gang, police sources said.
An hour after Atkinson was shot to death, a gunman shot and wounded a 22-year-old man in the wrist and a 19-year-old bystander in the leg in a park behind the Rutgers Houses near Madison St.
At some point that night Huang and Parrilla were kidnapped by furious Down the Hill members and forced to lure a 27-year-old gang rival from his home in Ridgewood, Queens, at 2:20 a.m. the next day.
A waiting gunman shot that victim in the left side of his face and arm before fleeing.
The target escaped with his life and is recovering. Roughly two hours later, Huang and Parrilla were found dead in the burned car.
On July 19, members of the U.S. Marshals Mountain State Fugitive Task Force learned that Humphrey was lying low near Shasta Lane in Martinsburg.
After canvassing the area, marshals spotted Humphrey leaving the location in a black Jeep. The Jeep was pulled over on Golf Course Road, and Humphrey was arrested without incident, said Acting U.S. Marshal Terry Moore.
