BY THE VILLAGE SUN | Police have made an arrest in the June Soho murder of local sneaker boutique owner Javier Osorio-Mejia.
Following an ongoing police investigation, Jayquan Straker, 35, of Poughkeepsie was arrested on Thurs., Aug. 22, at the 1st Precinct in Tribeca.
Straker was charged with murder in the first and second degree and robbery in the first and second degree, plus criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree.
On Tues., June 25, around 5:15 a.m., responding officers found Osorio-Mejia, 31, of Bayonne, N.J., lying unresponsive and unconscious in front of 41 Greene St., between Grand and Broome Streets. He had a gunshot wound to the right thigh.
E.M.S. transported him to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The police press department did not immediately have more information on the motive for the shooting or if the two men might have known each other.
However, the Daily News reported that, according to prosecutors, the victim, who was driving home to Bayonne and was accompanied by a female passenger, was tailed to Soho from a Queens strip club by two men who had seen him showing off his “flashy jewelry…on Instagram.”
The robbers pounced when the sneaker merchant stepped out of his vehicle to go to the bathroom. They did not give Osorio-Mejia a chance to hand over his property. Instead, they shot him and then “took less than a minute” to strip the jewelry and a Rolex watch off the dying victim, the News reported.
Osorio-Mejia previously owned Vault 134, a high-end sneaker boutique at 134 Orchard St. on the Lower East Side, before opening Vault New York, at 250 E. Houston St., near Avenue A, where some sneakers sell for up to $8,000.
X news blogger HarrietEve9 said the slain merchant was also known as Upscale Cracc, tweeting, “Upscale Cracc was the plug to many celebrity sneaker heads.”
Be First to Comment