NEW YORK CITY — Police on Friday arrested a 22-year-old man suspected of shooting and killing 20-year-old Azsia Johnson on Wednesday night while she was walking with her 3-month-old child.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell confirmed that Isaac Argro was arrested on charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
Update 12:16 p.m. EDT July 3: Isaac Argro, 22, was arraigned Saturday night in Manhattan Criminal Court on charges of second-degree murder and second-degree weapons possession, prosecutors said. He was being held without bail, WABC-TV reported.
“This case can only be described as a premeditated execution. The defendant persuaded the victim to meet after work and under the guise that he wanted to give the deceased items for their 3-month-old daughter,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Brittany DeCesare said in court. “The defendant shot the mother of his child at point-blank range in the head, keeping his crying 3-month-old [daughter] in the stroller as he ran away.”
Original report: New York City Council member Julie Menin said in a Twitter post Friday that “Azsia Johnson’s ex-boyfriend” was arrested in connection with her death, citing police sources.
Unidentified law enforcement sources told WNBC and WABC that Argro is the father of Johnson’s 3-month-old daughter. Family members told The Associated Press that Argro often beat Johnson during her pregnancy and threatened to kill her.
Johnson was also mother to a toddler, according to The New York Times.
Officials earlier told the Times that police were investigating the killing as a possible incident of domestic violence. Authorities told the newspaper that Johnson had been living at a family shelter that houses victims of domestic violence.
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Johnson’s mother, Lisa Desort, told WPIX that her daughter had moved to the shelter due to issues with the father of Johnson’s 3-month-old child. Desort told the news station that the baby’s father had threatened Johnson and that she had told her daughter “to watch herself.”
“The city failed my daughter, because on Jan. 1, my daughter called me and said she was being abused while she was six months pregnant,” Desort said Thursday at a vigil for her daughter, according to WNBC and Upper East Site. “She was scared to call the police, so she gave me the address. I called police.”
Police said a man wearing all black shot Johnson once in the head from a very close range on Wednesday night as she was pushing a stroller carrying her 3-month-old baby in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The man ran from the area after the shooting.
Johnson’s daughter was not injured.