Jailed con busted in slays
4th to be arrested in Lower East Side gang war double homicide
Detectives have arrested a fourth suspect in the grisly 2022 double murder fueled by an ongoing Lower East Side gang war, police sources said Wednesday.
Richard Santiago, 32, was charged Wednesday with murder, robbery, grand larceny, arson and kidnapping, among other charges.
After identifying Santiago as a suspect, detectives found Santiago at the Riverview Correctional Facility in upstate Ogdensburg, where he has served five months of a five-year sentence on a Manhattan gang assault and weapons possession conviction.
Santiago was sent upstate in October 2023, about 17 months after the May 16, 2022, slaying of Nikki Huang and Jesse Parrilla. He also served three years in prison beginning in 2014 on a conspiracy conviction, according to court records.
Police on Monday charged Terrence White, 26, with murder, manslaughter, robbery, grand larceny, kidnapping and arson for the double murder.
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.
Santiago’s older brother Steven Santiago, 35, is still being sought in the killing of Parrilla and Huang.
Their badly burned bodies were found in a torched car on Shore Road near the Split Rock Golf Course in Pelham Bay, the Bronx.
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.
About 1:20 a.m. on 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.
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 allegedly providing the getaway car, assisting in kidnapping Huang and Parrilla and bringing them up to the Bronx.
Jahmel Sanders was arrested on March 7, 2023, for the double killing and remains at Rikers Island as his case is prosecuted in Bronx Criminal Court.