Cops charge one for murder of Taiwanese student

He’s only 18 but already Jermaine Matura has racked up quite a rap sheet and is a notorious figure in the crime world.  Aside form being the victim of gun violence, he now is the latest to be charged in one of the city’s most senseless killings of recent times.  Matura is charged with the shooting murder of Hellen Yu, 14, who was viciously gunned down inside her family’s grocery shop on Iguana Street Extension two Thursday’s ago.  Her father, Ziren was also critically wounded by another bullet as he tried to defend his family in a barrage of bullets fired from the gun held by one of three men who targeted their store in an armed robbery.

Matura faces murder, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, dangerous harm, use of deadly means of harm, wounding, robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery.  While police have thrown the book at him, his mother, Lisa Matura, has claimed that her son has at least two alibis that he was elsewhere while the mid-morning assault was taking place.  She claims her son was baby-sitting at the time for a family member.  Lisa acknowledges that her son is no saint, and says the last time h went to prison she did not visit him because she thought he was hanging with wrong company.  This time, however, she says she knows her son did not committ the crime and lays blame at the feet of three other youths, one of whom stopped to wash his hands and face in the yard of a woman who spoke with the killers soon after the incident.

The thieves demanded money and stole close to $500, and two phones in the attack.  They gained entry when Ziren went inside and removed the lock to the grilled door leading to the family’s living quarters as he was fixing a car in front of the shop.  His wife, Zhuang Huang, also known as Lilly, was pistol-whipped in the process, and young Hellen, who was cleaning up the living quarters, was shot in the back by one of the three robbers as he was riding off.  Her father had tried to fire back with his licensed weapon, but he too was shot in left rib cage and left arm.

It was a result of young Hellen’s murder that the Asian community staged a shut down of all of their business establishments last Thursday as they laid her to rest.

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