On the evening of March 4, 2015, Michelle Cox, a 41-year-old female and mother of five, was walking home from a store in her Bronx neighborhood. As she entered the stairwell of her apartment building on Webster Avenue around 10 p.m., she was fatally shot in the back of the head. She was pronounced dead at the scene. For years, her case went cold, leaving her family desperate for answers and justice.
The senseless nature of her death left her sister and community searching for a reason why someone would take the life of a woman described as harmless and nice.
For nearly nine years, there were no arrests, and the investigation seemed to have stalled. Her family expressed feelings of neglect from investigators as they continued to hope for a breakthrough that would bring them peace. Then, in January 2024, a significant development occurred when the New York Police Department arrested Lasalle Herman, a 34-year-old resident of Harlem, and charged him with the murder of Michelle Cox. Herman was awaiting arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court on the murder charge.
Further details emerged in February 2025, when federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging Rubin Moye, also known as 'Nut,' with ordering Michelle Cox's murder. Moye, identified as a member of the Santana Block Crips, allegedly directed two associates to find and kill someone connected to a rival gang member. The indictment stated that these associates located Ms. Cox, who was a friend of the intended rival, in the stairwell of an apartment building where one of them shot her in the head. Moye faces charges including murder in aid of racketeering, murder while engaged in a narcotics conspiracy, and murder through the use of a firearm.
