Detectives have apprehended a fourth suspect in the grisly 2022 double murder fueled by an ongoing Lower East Side gang war, police sources said Wednesday.
A person of interest was taken into custody and is being questioned at the 45th Precinct stationhouse Wednesday, cops said. Criminal charges are pending. The suspect’s name and further details of the arrest were not immediately disclosed.
Police on Monday charged Terrence White, 26, with murder, manslaughter, robbery, grand larceny, kidnapping and arson for the May 16, 2022 slaying of Nikki Huang and Jesse Parilla.
Authorities said White was already in prison on a conviction for an attempted assault in Manhattan. He also has a prior arrest for gun possession.
Two other suspects have already been nabbed in the grisly slaying of childhood friends Huang, a 23-year-old nail salon owner, and Parrilla, 22.
Suspect Steven Santiago, 35, is still being sought in the killing of Parrilla and Huang. It was not immediately disclosed if Santiago is the man being questioned by police Wednesday.
Their badly burned bodies were found in a torched car on Shore Road near the Split Rock Golf Course in Pelham Bay.
Huang and Parrilla were killed during an eight-hour explosion of violence between the long-feuding Up the Hill and Down the Hill gangs, according to police.
The two rival crews operate on the Lower East Side, their territories separated by a small “hill” in the road on Grand St. near Madison St.
Huang worked behind the counter of Wa Lung Kitchen on Grand St., her family’s Chinese restaurant, which sits right on the dividing line. Members of both gangs would often eat there — including her alleged killers, her family said. Huang also owned her own nail salon nearby.
The bloodshed started after Huang was pistol-whipped and robbed of her Louis Vuitton purse during a mugging. She turned to her friends in the Up The Hill gang and not long after that someone shot Brandon Atkinson, 20, to death the night of May 15 at Avenue D and E. Third St.
Atkinson, it turned out, was the brother of two Down the Hill members, sources said.
Down the Hill members targeted Huang in retaliation, waiting for her near her Lower East Side home, prosecutors said. Parrilla was simply collateral damage swept up in the confrontation because he was hanging out with Huang, investigators believe.
At about 1:20 a.m. May 16, 2022, Parrilla drove Huang home in his mom’s Honda Accord and dropped her off. The gang members grabbed him, pulled him into a different vehicle, and spirited him away, prosecutors said.
About 20 minutes later, the band of killers lured Huang out of her building and grabbed her as well, forcing her into Parrilla’s left-behind Honda, according to prosecutors.
The killers took the two friends to Shore Road near Pelham Bay Park, shot Huang in the head and neck and Parrilla in the head and chest, prosecutors say.
bxkill
The gang then burned the two of them inside a sedan, torching their bodies so thoroughly that Parrilla had to be identified through dental records.
Murder suspect Rahul Cuya, 24, was nabbed in front of his Bronx home on March 12 and is facing murder, manslaughter, robbery, kidnapping and arson charges for providing the getaway car, assisting in kidnapping Huang and Parilla and bringing them up to the Bronx.
Jahmel Sanders was arrested on March 7, 2023, for the double killing and remains on Rikers Island as his case is prosecuted in Bronx Criminal Court.
