Ying Zhu Liu

Ying Zhu Liu, a 57-year-old Asian woman and home health aide, was a mother and wife living with her family in the Two Bridges neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. She and her husband had immigrated to the United States about a decade earlier, building a life in their apartment building on Market Street, just south of the Manhattan Bridge.

On the night of September 9, 2024, that life was violently cut short. Around 11 p.m., Liu’s 61-year-old husband, Shen Yan, was returning home. After his son buzzed him into their building at 44 Market Street, two men wearing ski masks followed him inside and into the elevator. When the doors opened on the eighth floor, the men brandished a handgun and began to rob him in the hallway. The couple’s 32-year-old son, Lin Rong Yan, was waiting in the hall and tried to intervene, but one of the assailants pistol-whipped him, causing multiple fractures to his face and nose.

Hearing the commotion, Liu came out of her apartment, reportedly with a stick, to defend her husband and son. Her husband shouted a warning: “Stay back, they have a gun.” The struggle moved from the hallway into a stairwell, where one of the robbers raised his gun and fired a single shot from just a few feet away, striking Liu in the face. She collapsed in the hallway and was pronounced dead at the scene from a gunshot wound to the head. The attackers fled with her husband’s cell phone and $100 in cash.

The New York Police Department launched an investigation that quickly led to an arrest. Less than two weeks after the shooting, in September 2024, police took 16-year-old Dante Schaller into custody. He was identified in court complaints and charged with second-degree murder, robbery, burglary, and criminal possession of a weapon.

The search for the second suspect continued for several months. In March 2025, investigators tracked 19-year-old Joshua Bell to South Carolina. He was arrested and extradited back to New York to face charges of murder, robbery, burglary, and criminal possession of a weapon. Bell pleaded not guilty at his arraignment. As of March 2025, the court proceedings for both suspects were pending litigation.