A second suspect has been collared in the the killing of a 57-year-old woman during the robbery of her husband outside their Lower East Side apartment last year, police said Friday.
Joshua Bell, 19, was extradited to the city following his arrest earlier this week in South Carolina, police said.
He will be charged with murder, police said, for the Sept. 9 shooting inside victim Ying Zhu Liu’s apartment building on Market St. near Madison St.
Bell was part of a trio of masked stickup men who followed Liu’s husband, 61, into the building and onto the elevator, police said.
The victim was robbed of $100 in cash and his cellphone, cops said. As the elevator opened up on the eighth floor, they were greeted by Liu’s 31-year-old son, Lin Rong Yan, who neighbors know as Paul.
“Stay back! They have a gun!” Liu’s husband said before Paul jumped into the elevator to save his father.
“Paul came out,” a neighbor who watched surveillance footage of the clash but didn’t want to be identified said after the killing. “Paul and his father were scuffling with them.”
During the fight in the elevator, the teens dropped the gun, but managed to scoop it up as the father and son forced the muggers to the opposite end of the hallway from their apartment and through a stairwell door, prosecutors said.
After they went through the door, Liu can be seen on video running down the hall from the direction of their unit. She entered the stairwell door and then moments later collapsed back through it, said the neighbor.
“It was one shriek, then another shriek and then I heard a pop,” the shocked building resident said. “Then I heard more commotion and yelling.”
The gunman shot Liu in the face from less than 3 feet away as the brawl continued, prosecutors said after the first arrest, of a 16-year-old boy, less than two weeks after the murder.
A third suspect is still being sought.