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Suspect Arrested for Fatal New Year's Eve Shooting, Police Say

By Aidan Gardiner | February 18, 2014 8:23am
 Sheldon Smith, shown here, was arrested for killing Julio Mora, police said.
Sheldon Smith, shown here, was arrested for killing Julio Mora, police said.
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Image Composite with NYPD and Shutterstock

QUEENS — The man who killed a New Year's Eve party-goer in Jamaica just an hour after the ball dropped was finally caught Monday, according to police and reports.

Julio Mora, 22, was inside 150-25 113th Ave., near Sutphin Boulevard, when 26-year-old  Sheldon Smith shot him in the chest about 1:14 a.m. Jan. 1, the NYPD said.

Mora was pronounced dead at the scene in the city's first homicide of the year, police said.

Investigators initially thought Mora was stabbed, but the city's medical examiner determined that he was shot to death, police said.

Mora's mother died the same day 19 years prior, grieving relatives told the Times Ledger. She died of a heart attack when she was 24, they added.

"It was the same day: January 1st," Mora's grandfather, Carmelo Sanchez, told the Ledger. "It hit home hard."

Smith was arrested Monday on charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon, police said.

Smith has been arrested more than 10 times, including for possession of a controlled substance in September, an NYPD spokesman said.

He also spent time in prison until September 2011 for criminal possession of a controlled substance and criminal possession of a weapon, prison records show.