Illegal immigrant wanted on warrant now suspected in fatal shooting outside NYC building
An illegal immigrant from Venezuela with a lengthy rap sheet is wanted for allegedly gunning down two people during a dispute outside a Bronx apartment building – while already being sought on a felony warrant.
Josue Ruben Silva, 21, who has already been busted half a dozen times this year on robbery, theft and gun charges, is now facing a murder rap following the early Friday morning shooting in Fordham Heights, police and law enforcement sources told The Post.
Silva, who skipped out on a Bronx gun case, is also suspected in a series of migrant moped robberies.
“We have no idea who they are, what they’ve done in their own countries, what the plan is for them now that they’re here,” one frustrated law enforcement source told The Post . “Who says they can’t graduate from stealing sunglasses to a double murder?
“But maybe we’re gonna explain all that away too because somebody’s ‘a migrant,'” the source said. “Empathy can’t excuse away a double murder. We have to get our hands around this problem or it’s going to get its hands around us.”
Friday’s fatal shooting stemmed from a dispute sparked by a nasty comment to one victim’s gal pal, sources said.
Police sources said the victims were outside the Davidson Avenue building shortly after midnight when a passerby made a disrespectful comment to a 44-year-old woman.
The woman’s boyfriend confronted the creep and the two got into a dispute – but the man left and went inside the building, only to return later with a menacing group of friends lugging baseball bats, according to sources.
One of the thugs opened fire with a .40-caliber handgun, striking the woman, her 36-year-old boyfriend and a 21-year-old woman who was struck in the arm, sources said.
The two older victims were struck in the chest and taken to St. Barnabas Hospital, where they were both later pronounced dead, according to police.
The third victim suffered a non-life-threatening injury.
The Venezuelan native was in the US illegally and in the Big Apple for about a year, the sources said.
Silva has repeatedly run afoul of the NYPD in the months since his arrival – with six arrests on a variety of charges and a suspected link to the moped heists that have terrorized the city.
His first arrest came on Feb. 6, when he was charged with petty larceny in Brooklyn, according to sources and court records.
On Feb. 25, he was busted on charges of grand larceny and criminal possession of a loaded gun, the sources and court records said.
A spokesman for the Bronx DA’s office said Thursday that prosecutors asked for bail but Silva was put on supervised release – and had a bench warrant issued after skipping out on the case.
His next arrest was on a robbery charge on April 4, followed by a possession of stolen property rap on May 3, according to sources and court records.
It is not clear if Silva is among the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have been bused to the five boroughs from the US border with Mexico since 2022.
Officials at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.