Suspect in double-slay nabbed after scuffle

The months-long hunt for a suspect in a gruesome double-homicide ended with a door knock.

Accused killer Jahmel Sanders, 30, was taken into custody after a brief scuffle when cops showed up at his girlfriend’s Bronx home, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said Wednesday.

“We found him there,” said Essig. “We knocked on the door, he answered it.”

Sanders faced an array of charges from murder to kidnapping and arson in the May 16, 2022 executions of Nikki Huang and her friend Jesse Parrilla. The two victims were shot in the head, with their charred corpses found inside a burned-out car in the Bronx.

He was arrested Tuesday to end a 10-month manhunt, and authorities are still looking for fellow suspect Steven Santiago, 34. Both were members of the “Down the Hill” gang on the Lower East Side, and Essig said the fugitive Santiago had ties to New Jersey Police previously sought the suspect in New Jersey and Queens, according to the chief. His girlfriend was not charged with any crimes, he added.

Sanders had been staying at an assisted care facility for mentally ill and formerly homeless people, where he bragged about having killed someone after moving in about two years ago, according to a neighbor.

“He was in and out, but mostly out,” said the neighbor, who did not want to be named. “He was mostly quiet but he had real problems. Sometimes he’d be in the hall screaming, ‘Those motherf-----s are coming to get me!’”

Sanders winked at a brief hearing Wednesday in the Bronx attended by the victims’ family members.

A fast-escalating dispute between the gang and its rival “Up The Hill” crew wound up with three people dead and three more wounded across eight hours of violence on the Lower East Side, Queens and the Bronx.

The lethal events were set in motion when Huang, 23, was robbed on the street of her expensive Louis Vuitton bag, with the victim reaching out to the “Up The Hill” friends to start the wheels in motion.