The gunman wanted for a double fatal shooting at a Brooklyn migrant shelter — part of a violent Venezuelan migrant gang war that involved another murder the same night — has been busted, police said Friday.
Elijah Mitchell, 23, of Corona, was charged Tuesday with murder, gun possession and reckless endangerment. Mitchel was ordered held on $350,000 bail and was due back in court Friday.
His alleged accomplice, Jorge Said Benitez Villa, 26, was charged last Thursday with murder.
The shooting happened the night of July 21 in front of a shelter on Ryerson St. near Park Ave. in Clinton Hill.
Benitez Villa rode up on a moped and Mitchell, his passenger, opened fire, police said.
Enny de Jesus Urbina Mendez, 21, was struck and died shortly after being rushed to Bellevue Hospital. The second victim, Francisco Fuentes Rangel, 59, was shot in the head and taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Methodist Hospital, where he died two days later.
“The 59-year-old guy had nothing to do with it. He [was] only sitting down drinking and enjoying [himself],” one witness, who wanted to be identified only as Angel, told the Daily News after the shooting. “There were two guys on motorcycles with masks on. It’s scary.”
The suspects drove off but Benitez Villa crashed about six blocks away near Park Ave. and Taaffe Place and was seriously injured, police said.
Seven minutes earlier, a gunman opened fire from a blue vehicle two blocks away at the Steuben Playground near Flushing Ave. and Steuben St., killing Arturo Jose Rodriguez Marcano, 30. Police believe the shooting was related to the double homicide in front of the shelter. The suspect in the blue vehicle is still being sought.
The shootings occurred amid growing tensions between the Venezuelan-based Trend de Aragua and a splinter gang, Anti-Tren, police sources said.
Mendez is a Venezuelan national who came to the U.S. about a year ago through San Diego. Since moving to the city, he has been arrested repeatedly for shoplifting, mostly in Manhattan, cops said.
Beginning as a prison gang in Aragua, Venezuela, Tren de Aragua has quickly become a transnational criminal organization that is expanding throughout the Western Hemisphere, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
The gang is known for human smuggling and sex trafficking as well as money laundering and drug dealing.
Last month, Bernardo Raul Castro Mata, who was arrested for shooting two Queens police officers after being caught zipping the wrong way down a one-way Queens street on a scooter, admitted to authorities that he is a member of Tren de Aragua. He told authorities it wasn’t a big deal for gang members and police in his native country to shoot at each other.