A second teenager was arrested on Friday in connection with the fatal shooting of a 57-year-old woman who was trying to protect her husband and son from two violent muggers in September, police said.
Joshua Bell, 19, faces charges of murder, robbery, burglary, and criminal possession of a weapon for the Sept. 9 killing of Ying Zhu Liu. She was shot in the face inside the hallway of her family’s Lower Manhattan condo building at 44 Market Street, authorities said.
The attack occurred around 11 p.m. when two masked suspects followed Liu’s husband, Shen Yan, 61, into the building’s elevator around 10:50 p.m. and pulled a gun on him, police said.
The suspects stole Yan’s Samsung phone and $100 in cash, according to a criminal complaint.
When the elevator reached the 8th floor, where Yan lived, his 32-year-old son, Lin Rong Yan, was waiting in the hallway. Seeing his son, the father issued a stark warning:
“Stay back, they have a gun,” he said, according to the complaint.
Lin Rong Yan attempted to intervene but was pistol-whipped, suffering facial fractures and a broken nose.
Hearing the commotion, Liu stepped out of the apartment to help her husband and son. One of the assailants then fired a single shot at her from three feet away, striking her in the face. She collapsed as blood poured from her head and mouth.
Liu, a home health aide, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Bell, dressed in a white T-shirt over a cream-colored shirt, shorts, and black sandals with socks, remained silent as detectives escorted him from the 5th Precinct stationhouse Friday afternoon.
He was arraigned that evening and sent to Rikers Island, a police source said.
“He was such a piece of s–t,” the source remarked. “They fast-tracked him.”
Bell had previously been arrested in August 2023 for robbery, according to police.
Another suspect, 16-year-old Dante Schaller, was arrested 10 days after the murder and faces the same charges as Bell, police said.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office confirmed that Schaller, who had just turned 16 days before the killing, will be tried as an adult.
Sources also revealed Schaller had an open felony case for assaulting a police officer.
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