A man accused of gunning down Sorai King inside a Bronx deli last year was charged with murder — the same day he was arrested for an earlier drive-by shooting that left an 18-year-old man dead and three innocent bystanders wounded, cops said Tuesday.
Marlon Smith, 22, was arrested Monday and charged with murder for the April 17, 2025, fatal shooting of King. While Smith was in custody, detectives connected him to a second murder, this time of 18-year-old Aneki Chung, who was struck during a deadly drive-by shooting on Nov. 17, 2021, according to law enforcement.
Courtesy of family
Sorai King, 20, was shot and killed on Bronxwood Ave. in the Bronx on Thursday, April 17, 2025.
In addition to the two fatal shootings, Smith is also charged with attempted murder for shooting a man in the leg outside a housing complex in Throgs Neck on Oct. 20, 2021.
King, 20, was shot in the neck and chest at the deli on Bronxwood Ave. near E. 217th St. in Williamsbridge around 1:30 p.m., police said.
EMS transported him to Jacobi Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Distraught family members told The News that King was on his way to pick up some food for his mother, Sonja King.
“He was going to the store for his mother. He was very loving. He went to the store and he never came back,” the victim’s 15-year-old niece Nana King said after the attack. “We only knew something was wrong when the detectives came.”
“He was very loving, and if I had any problems, I could always run to him,” she said before dissolving into tears.
In the 2021 shooting that claimed Chung’s life, witnesses saw two gunmen firing from inside a passing black SUV on Burke Ave. near Barnes Ave. in Williamsbridge around 5 p.m.
FOURSHOT
Sam Costanza/for New York Daily News
Police investigate at Burke Ave. at Barnes Ave. in the Bronx, where four people were shot in a drive-by shooting on Nov. 17, 2021.
One of the shooters, the driver, reached up through his open window and fired over the roof of his SUV at a group of people on the street.
Chung, who had an imitation pistol on him and was the intended target, was shot in the head, cops said. He died at Jacobi Medical Center five days later.
A 15-year-old boy was also hit in the buttocks, a 59-year-old woman was shot in the left thigh, and a 26-year-old man who worked as a porter at a nearby homeless outreach agency was also hit in the thigh.
Smith was the third suspect to be arrested in the drive-by shooting within the last five weeks. Nickoy Brown, 20, was arrested April 9 and Jeivany Sterling, 24, was charged April 30 for the murder.
Brown and Sterling have both been indicted for Chung’s murder and were ordered held without bail. Smith’s arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court was pending Tuesday, officials said.
In the nonfatal shooting in Throgs Neck, Smith blasted a 41-year-old man in the left leg as he was fleeing in front of a Schley Ave. residential tower near Balcom Ave. around 11:40 p.m., cops said.
He’s the third man to be charged in that shooting, following arrests last month and in 2022.