A second teenager was ordered held without bail in Manhattan court on Wednesday in connection with the fatal shooting of a Lower East Side woman last year, joining his 16-year-old alleged accomplice in custody.
Joshua Bell, 19, appeared in Manhattan Supreme Court before Judge Curtis Farber on an indictment charging him with murder, robbery, burglary and weapons possession. Prosecutors allege he was one of two masked thieves who shot and killed 57-year-old Ying Zhu Liu during a Sept. 9 confrontation in the hallway of her building on Market Street near Madison Street. The other teen was arrested 10 days after the incident, according to police, who have not publicly identified him.
Bell pleaded not guilty to the charges on Wednesday. Prosecutors said he was arrested in South Carolina after police tracked him there and surrounded the house where he was staying. Officers recovered a loaded Smith & Wesson gun inside, according to prosecutors. Bell was then extradited to New York City, where police said he had at some point been living at the Amsterdam Houses on the Upper West Side.
Bell’s attorney, Michael Hurwitz, asked for his client to be granted bail, saying evidence in the case suggested Bell was not the person who shot Liu.
“Legally it doesn’t matter if he had the gun. … It’s murder in the second degree,” Assistant District Attorney Antoinette Carter responded. “It’s not just that he fled after committing the most serious crime one can commit. He may have had help from people in his family.”
She added that prosecutors' evidence includes 911 calls, surveillance and police body-worn camera video, and Liu’s autopsy report.
The building where a Lower East Side woman was fatally shot on Sept. 9, 2024.
Police said they tracked the teens down using surveillance footage that showed them without their masks at a deli on Hester Street in Manhattan. Bell faces up to life in prison if he is convicted on the murder charge.
Farber said the fact that Bell allegedly fled New York after Liu’s killing was enough of a reason to deny him bail and hold him in jail until his next court date, which the judge scheduled for July.
Hurwitz and members of Bell’s family declined to comment after the hearing.
According to court documents, Bell and the other teen followed Liu’s husband into the apartment building around 11 p.m. on the night of the shooting. One of them pulled out a handgun and took the husband’s cellphone and $100, prosecutors said.
When the elevator reached the eighth floor, the husband’s grown son tried to intervene, starting a physical altercation in the hallway, according to the documents. Liu came out of the apartment to defend her family members, prosecutors said, and one of the teens raised a gun and fired a single shot at her from about three feet away, killing her almost instantly.
