Michelle Morales knew her son was likely dead long before the medical examiner’s office confirmed the truth.
“Someone took a photo of him in the car,” Morales said on Monday. “I saw my son’s bones.”
Morales said she received a flurry of gruesome pictures on the morning of May 16, the day before her son was confirmed dead. They arrived by text in the hours after her son, 22-year-old Jesse Parrilla, and his girlfriend, 22-year-old Nikki Huang, were discovered in the driver and passenger seats of Parrilla’s burning 2020 silver Honda near a Bronx, New York, golf course.
Police believe Huang was initially targeted by a downtown gang because she complained to a rival group that she’d been mugged. Huang’s family owns a restaurant and nail salon in the area, so she knew a lot of people in the neighborhood.
On the night of May 15, a series of shootings signaled some kind of revenge feud was playing out in New York’s East Village, Lower East Side, and Maspeth, Queens.
Around 1 a.m., Parrilla, a college basketball player, was carjacked as he dropped off Huang at her apartment, according to police sources. An alleged member of the “Down the Hill” gang had already been shot dead in the East Village, and two members of “Up the Hill” were shot and wounded, police sources said.
Investigators believe Parrilla and Huang were driven to Maspeth, Queens, where another reputed gang member was shot on the left side of his face as he took out the trash at 2:20 a.m.
About this time, Parrilla answered his mother’s repeated phone calls and said, “I love you, Mom,” before the call abruptly dropped. He had told his mother he was in Brooklyn.
Police said Parrilla and Huang were both shot in the head before the Honda was set on fire near the golf course in a quiet section of the Bronx. The horrific scene was discovered at 4:30 a.m. on May 16.
“I feel disrespected on his death, how it happened,” Morales said. “I deserve answers … He’s all I had. I sacrificed and lived for him.”
Morales was a single mom who was 19 years old when her only child, Jesse, was born. Morales said her son was taking real estate courses and also finishing up business classes at Genessee Community College upstate, where he played basketball.
“He wasn’t into gangs; he wasn’t affiliated with any of that stuff,” his mother said.
On June 28, on what should have been Parrilla’s 23rd birthday, his mother held a small gathering in his honor, complete with a cake that had angel wings attached.
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