An Auburndale man was arrested May 11 and charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a Jamaica man last summer.
Damion Howell, 39, of 194th Street, was taken into custody at the 103rd Precinct in Jamaica, nine months after he allegedly gunned down 29-year-old Julian Askew, who lived on Guy R. Brewer Boulevard near Brinkerhoff Avenue.
During the early morning hours of Friday, Aug. 5, 2022, officers from the 103rd Precinct in Jamaica responded to a 911 call of a man shot in front of an apartment building at 106-15 Waltham St., near Tuskegee Airman Way, where they found Askew lying in a pool of blood with a gunshot wound to his chest. EMS responded to the crime scene and rushed him to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in critical condition.
The NYPD released surveillance photos of two suspects in the shooting 10 days later.
A preliminary investigation determined that Askew got into a verbal dispute with two men, and one of them — allegedly Howell, according to homicide detectives — pulled out a firearm and shot Askew in the chest before the two assailants fled the location, on foot in an unknown direction.
Three months after he was gunned down, Askew was recuperating at his home on Guy R. Brewer Boulevard when he took a turn for the worse on Monday, police said. He was taken to Queens Hospital, where he died later that day.
The shooting was then reclassified as a homicide investigation.
An NYPD spokesman wasn’t able to provide additional details on the arrest of Howell, only saying he was taken into custody in the confines of the 103rd Precinct at 6:15 p.m. on May 10. Howell was charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon for a loaded handgun, according to the NYPD.
