A Mount Vernon man was arrested Wednesday night in the fatal shooting of his niece on a Bronx street, a killing authorities and law enforcement sources said stemmed from a dispute over an inherited home.
Michael Foster, 58, is accused of shooting 39-year-old Julia Anderson several times in the stomach Monday night as she was getting ready to climb into her black Jeep in Wakefield, according to the NYPD and police sources.
Anderson, who also lived in nearby Mount Vernon, was discovered on the ground beside her vehicle on Murdock Avenue after officers responded to a 911 call reporting the gunfire, the sources said.
Emergency responders rushed her to Jacobi Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead, police said.
Investigators believe the deadly confrontation was tied to a fight over a home the relatives had inherited, sources said. Foster and Anderson had been living in the same Mount Vernon residence.
Late Wednesday, members of the NYPD Crime Scene Unit were seen searching a Bell Avenue home in the Westchester County suburb connected to both Foster and Anderson.
Officers removed brown paper evidence bags from the leafy property while photographing the scene and inspecting a gun box outside the home.
Foster was charged with murder, manslaughter and 10 counts of criminal possession of a weapon, police said.
The alleged killer wore bright yellow shorts, socks and sandals, and kept his head down as cops walked him from the Bronx’s 47th Precinct to a police car Wednesday night.
Foster was awaiting his arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court.
Anderson’s mother, Beverley Patterson, told Fox5 that her daughter worked as a disability aide and was just a month away from her 40th birthday.
“She was very good, she kind of looks similar like me, although she’s tall, like 6 foot, I think,” Patterson told the outlet.
“I don’t know, she went to work and that was it, never heard anything from her again.”
