Bandits wearing ski masks shoot Chinese mother while trying to rob her husband

On the night of September 9, two “masked” bandits shot dead 57-year-old Chinese woman Ying Zhu Liu in the hallway of the 8th floor of her family's apartment in Chinatown. The incident apparently occurred during a robbery gone brutally wrong.

Tragically, Liu, a home health aide, was not the criminals' original target. Rather, it was her 61-year-old husband, who returned to their apartment building at 44 Market Street, just south of the Manhattan Bridge between Madison and Monroe Streets, shortly after 11 p.m.

For reasons that are currently unclear, the husband had to be lured by Lin Rong Yan, the couple's 32-year-old son. But he was not alone.

According to police sources, the husband (Yan's father) had been chased by the two bandits into the building and into the elevator. After coming out from the 8th floor where Yan was waiting, they tried to rob him. When the son tried to thwart the robbery, he was beaten with a pistol. When Yan's mother heard the noise and came out of the apartment with an object described as a stick, one of the bandits shot her in the face. The wound was fatal.

At the time of going to press, both suspects were still at large after stealing the husband's cell phone. Photos of the perpetrators have not yet been released. The husband's name is also apparently being kept secret. In the phone book of the twelve-story building, Lin/Ni's apartment is listed as 8A.

According to the Daily newsThe father is a retired restaurant worker and the family came from Fuzhou, China about a decade ago.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” the son told one News Reporter: He and his father were released from the hospital on Tuesday afternoon. “It's difficult. My mother was a good woman.”

Until Ying Zhu Liu's killers are caught – and even afterward – New Yorkers should be wary of anyone wearing black ski masks, also known as “sheisty masks,” whose sole purpose in warm weather is increasingly seen as concealing one's identity for the purpose of intimidation or committing crimes.

The official police description of the suspects is as follows: The shooter wore a black ski mask (“sheisty”), a half-black, half-red hooded jacket, black pants with a white stripe down the leg, and white sneakers. His accomplice wore a similar sheisty mask, a black hooded coat, white pants, and black and white sneakers.

While the available details raise many questions – particularly about the likelihood that the husband was not a “random” victim of a crime but was targeted for some reason – the fact that he and his murdered wife were both Asian cannot be ignored.

In fact, 44 Market Street is literally around the corner from 37 Monroe Street, where on June 26, two masked gangsters attacked 58-year-old Chinese woman Shi Yahan in broad daylight. Punches, kicks and a baseball bat were used in the attack, which ended without a robbery when a pedestrian approached. Although much of Monroe Street is covered in scaffolding designed to facilitate crime, surveillance photos of the two gangsters were soon released, revealing that beneath the masks were two young Asian men.

How young? When one of the suspects was caught weeks later, he was 14 years old. Because he is a minor, his name has not been released. Equally shocking is that the teenager's accomplice is believed to still be on the run.

Later, on August 2, a shocking Chinese Mahjong parlor on Canal Street was robbed by a 22-year-old black man, suspected gang member and repeat offender Joshua Dorsett. Wearing a blue COVID-era mask for nominal camouflage, Dorsett threatened the Chinese Mahjong patrons with a .45 Taurus semi-automatic pistol. After taking all the wallets he could find, he fled up Eldridge Street.

While inter-ethnic robberies are not unknown historically, they are rare—a perpetrator does not just rob individuals, he violates an entire culture and social structure; you will find many more details in the acclaimed crime novels of Chinatown native Henry Chang.

When two alert police officers attempted to stop Dorsett near Delancey Street, he fired at them. One bullet struck Sergeant Carl Johnson of the 5th Precinct in the groin and grazed Sergeant Christopher Leap of the 7th Precinct in the leg. Fortunately, both injuries were not serious and the officers only needed a short trip to the hospital.

Dorsett, who is charged with attempted first-degree murder, is being held without bail at the George R. Vierno Center in East Elmhurst, Queens.

Recently, 32-year-old Chinatown landlord Brian Chin was charged with aggravated assault for allegedly beating a vagrant at the corner of Grand and Chrystie Streets, just steps from Chin's building at 111 Chrystie Street.

If that address sounds familiar, it's because it is: It was the home of Christina Yun Lee—and Chin the landlord—the Korean-American woman who was viciously stabbed to death on February 13, 2022, by a deranged intruder who followed her into the building. Shortly after Lee's murder, a “Stop Asian Hate” protest and memorial service for Lee was held outside her building. Days later, the physical memorial to Lee, built around a tree on the sidewalk, was vandalized.

In conversation with the New York Post, Chin said: “I had to clean up all the broken glass. I'm trying to put the sign back together as best as I can… They're trying to desecrate them as much as they can and we as a community are beyond fed up, we're beyond angry and we're beyond tired of being attacked,” he added. “We're tired of seeing this hate and we're not going to tolerate this anymore.”