The execution-style murders of a young man and woman from the Lower East Side were the brutal cost of a senseless gang war, but the killers also had a personal motive — vengeance for the killing of their own flesh and blood, according to law enforcement sources.
As police close in on more culprits in the 2022 murders of childhood friends Jesse Parrilla and Nikki Huang, the tangled knot of motive has begun to unravel in the case.
So far, two suspects have been charged with their murders, and two more already locked up on unrelated charges are on the verge of being indicted, sources said. A fifth suspect, whose photo was released by police almost two years ago, is still on the run.
The victims’ badly burnt bodies were found in a torched car on Shore Road near the Split Rock Golf Course in Pelham Bay on May 16, 2022, leaving both victims’ families looking for answers for nearly two years.
“I’m just a mother in desperate need for the justice my son deserves,” Parrilla’s mother, Michelle Morales, told the Daily News last week. “I don’t think I’ll ever get over this. You can’t. He was my only child. I raised him alone. I struggled and raised him alone, trying and trying not to lose him in this matter. It’s not fair. He didn’t deserve this, and justice must be served.”
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.
One of those siblings, Steven Santiago, is wanted for the murders and remains at large despite police releasing his name and photos to the media in July 2022.
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DCPI Police are hunting 35-year-old Steven Santiago for a double homicide in May last year.
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.
Two People Dead In Burnt Car In The Bronx
Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News Nikki Huang, 23, and Jessie Parrilla, 22, were fatally shot in a car that was set on fire near a Bronx golf course on May 16, 2022.
Parrilla’s family described in an Instagram post how his mother made several frantic calls to him. The killers picked up, then let him tell her one final message: “I love you, Mom.”
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.
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.
Bronx, NY. 03/07/2023: Jahmal Sanders was walked out of the 45th Precinct, Tuesday afternoon after being charged in connection to the double homicide of Jesse Parrilla and Nikki Huang. Parrilla and Huang were shot and burned to death in their car on the
GREGG VIGLIOTTI/for New York Daily News Jahmel Sanders in police custody in the Bronx. (Gregg Vigliotti for New York Daily News)
After an agonizing 10 months of uncertainty, police made their first arrest, Jahmel Sanders, who remains locked up without bail on Rikers Island.
Cops busted Rahul Cuya, 24, last Tuesday. He was ordered held without bail at a Bronx Supreme Court arraignment Wednesday.
More arrests are imminent, according to law enforcement sources.
With Nicholas Williams
