Julio Velasquez, a 24-year-old Hispanic male from the Bronx, New York, was fatally shot on the evening of August 29, 2017. The incident occurred on the eighth floor of a building in the McKinley Houses public housing complex in the Morrisania neighborhood of the Bronx. Velasquez was discovered with a gunshot wound to his chest and was rushed to Lincoln Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
The investigation into the death of Julio Velasquez led to the arrest of his close friend,
25-year-old Salim Wilson. Surveillance footage from an elevator in the building reportedly captured a verbal altercation between Velasquez and two other men shortly before the shooting. Wilson and Velasquez had been friends for six or seven years, and Wilson was a familiar face to Velasquez's family, having even shared Thanksgiving dinner with them. The motive for the shooting is believed to have stemmed from a dispute over settlement money the two had received. Both Velasquez and Wilson had been co-plaintiffs in a civil rights lawsuit against two NYPD detectives from the 42nd Precinct, whom they accused of false arrest in a previous murder case. That case against them was ultimately dismissed.
In November 2017, a grand jury indicted Salim Wilson on charges of second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, and two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. At his arraignment, Wilson pleaded not guilty to the charges. His lawyer claimed that while Wilson was present in the building at the time of the shooting, he was not the one who shot his friend and characterized the allegations of a dispute as 'absolutely ridiculous.' Despite the indictment and initial court proceedings, publicly available information does not specify the final outcome of the trial, including whether Salim Wilson was ultimately convicted or acquitted of the charges related to the death of Julio Velasquez.
