Police charged on Friday the final suspect in a horrific Chinatown slaying last year in which a woman was shot dead in front of her husband and son.
The NYPD tracked down the perpetrator — identified as 19-year-old Joshua Bell, whose last known local address is on Amsterdam Avenue — in South Carolina and brought him back to the Big Apple to face charges on March 21 for the murder of Ying Zhu Liu.
Law enforcement sources said Liu, 57, was callously shot dead on the eighth floor of an apartment building at 44 Market St., where she lived, at around 11 p.m. on Sept. 9, 2024.
Based on the investigation, police learned that Liu’s 32-year-old son buzzed her husband into the apartment building, and two male suspects followed him inside. The husband and perpetrators took the elevator to the eighth floor, where they began to rob him at gunpoint.
During the shakedown, the victim’s son and his wife left their apartment after hearing raised voices and attempted to intervene when one of the suspects shot her in the face.
The two robbers fled with the husband’s cell phone while EMS and cops reopened the scene and pronounced Liu dead.
Later that month, cops arrested a 16-year-old boy — who remains unnamed due to his young age — for allegedly pulling the trigger. Bell, however, fled out of state, sources familiar with the case said — but ultimately, he could not escape the long arm of the law.
Bell was marched out of the 5th Precinct on Friday afternoon in shackles to central booking, then to Manhattan Criminal Court for arraignment. He did not answer questions from the press as he was led into the back of a police vehicle.
Both Bell and the 16-year-old were charged with murder, robbery, three counts of burglary, and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
