BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | A hip, up-and-coming New Jersey entrepreneur was fatally shot in Soho early Tuesday morning, police said.
Responding officers found Javier Osorio-Mejia, 31, from Bayonne around 5:30 a.m. at Grand and Greene Streets with one gunshot wound to his right thigh. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital where he died.
Osorio-Mejia’s LinkedIn page says he was the owner of a boutique, Vault 134, at 134 Orchard St., “a luxury Buy, Sell, Trade store. Carrying limited/exclusive sneakers, clothing, archive pieces, collectibles & others.” The New York Post reported that the Lower East Side shop, which opened around a year ago, has since closed but the sneaker reseller had another store and that his business was on the rise.
The other store, Vault New York, is located at 250 E. Houston St., near Avenue A. Its Web site displays a full selection of Yeezy and vintage Air Jordan footwear, with some kicks priced as high as $8,000.
Osorio-Mejia was previously an area operations manager for Amazon and before that a salesperson. He graduated from Bayonne High School and William Patterson University of New Jersey with a B.S. in information technology. He was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and the National Society of Black Engineers.
An X news blogger said the slain merchant also was known as Upscale Cracc.
“Upscale Cracc was the plug to many celebrity sneaker heads..His last post was to Instagram just hours before the shooting with a Queens location…,” HarrietEve9 tweeted.
NYPD searching for suspects in fatal shooting outside luxury stores in SoHo..
A group of men robbed and shot a 31-year-old man outside of his white Range Rover truck… According to authorities, the victim was struck three times and once in the right thigh just before 5:30 a.m.… pic.twitter.com/IDN1rekHgE
— HarrietEve9 (@HarrietEve9) June 25, 2024
A police spokesperson said the investigation is still in its early stages and that the murder’s motive is unknown. It’s unclear how many suspects there were, although the initial report was that a suspect fled in a dark vehicle.
Channel 7 Eyewitness News reported, “The victim may have been out in Queens Monday night and was driving through Soho as he returned home to Bayonne and he somehow interacted with the suspects.
“Detectives believe he was killed during an apparent robbery gone bad. Bloodstained clothes and a green pair of sneakers were left on the ground next to a Range Rover.”
Photos of the crime scene show multiple small yellow evidence markers scattered about on the sidewalk, including next to a large bloodstain, and on the cobblestoned street, indicating multiple shots likely may have been fired. Luckily, the gunfire occurred during a time of day when Soho’s streets are fairly deserted. No one else was reported injured.
This wasn’t over sneakers or a robbery.