By Brittany Kriegstein – 2025
Police said they arrested a 20-year-old man on Monday in connection with two fatal shootings that happened on the same Bronx corner within a week of each other last summer.
Jailyn Wagner was taken into custody in the Bronx under a search warrant and charged with murder, manslaughter and criminal weapons possession, according to the NYPD. He is accused of killing 28-year-old Idriss Cherif El Farissy on July 23 and 39-year-old Roman Martinez on July 29, both of whom were found with gunshot wounds to the head at East 176 Street and Mohegan Avenue near Crotona Park, police said.
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Detectives used surveillance video and witness testimony to link Wagner to both men’s deaths, NYPD officials said. They said Wagner had no prior arrests and they were still investigating whether the incidents were related apart from their shared location.
Attorney information for Wagner was not immediately available on Tuesday morning. Police gave his address as that of an East Harlem building where multiple news outlets last year reported a homeless shelter was located. Five men were slashed at the shelter last spring, the New York Post and ABC7 reported.
El Farissy was a delivery driver at a local Papa John’s restaurant who originally hailed from Morocco, according to news reports after he was killed. He was shot to death outside of his home during an attempted mugging around 3 a.m., the reports said. Surveillance video from the area reportedly showed the gunman rifling through El Farissy’s pockets before taking off.
Less than a week later on the same corner, Martinez was shot to death around 8 p.m. through the window of an RV camper he had bought to live in after a recent divorce, according to the New York Daily News. Police at the time said they neither had a motive for the shooting nor a description of the suspect.