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Nearly nine months after Fujianese immigrant Chen Fahua  was murdered delivering a Chinese takeaway meal to a Bronx apartment, the New York Police Department says  it has solved the killing.

David Robinson, 15, and Gerald Gordon, 20, have been charged with murder and gun possession. Chen was shot in the head as he tried to  stop his attackers  escaping after  an attempted robbery in  October.

But the arrests will do little to ease the torment suffered by Chen's family since his death. They had not seen him since he left Fujian for New York in 1995.

He had set off to New York to fulfil his dream of sending his daughter, Chen Ting, to Leicester University in Britain.

Ting was never able to thank her father in person. He was murdered two months before she had  planned to visit him.

Instead,  their reunion  came when Ting was forced to make the journey  from England to the Bronx to identify her murdered father's body.

Chen's widow, Wei Xiumei, has been living with relatives in New York since the murder,  waiting for the news that finally arrived last Wednesday.

'It has been many months since my husband and Ting's father was taken from us, and we think of him every day. Our lives will never be the same,' she said.

'We are relieved that the killers have been arrested and we thank the NYPD for their efforts.

'We look forward to justice being served.'

Detective Anthony Farino said a man arrested in another case gave police information that  led to the arrests of the pair, both of whom were already in custody facing other charges.

Before the breakthrough,  Mr Farino said the inquiry had stalled, with  witnesses only having seen the suspects leaving the apartment block.

'We have no particular witnesses who actually saw the incident, but we have several witnesses who saw the flight of the perpetrators,' Mr Farino said. The murder weapon has  been found. The breakthrough in the case came after a fractious few months for  the New York Police Department and  the city's Asian communities. Chen's death was seen as symbolic  of the struggle against racism that  Chinese immigrants  in the city face.

At the time of his death, prominent Asian New Yorkers  had thrown their support behind two Korean men facing assault charges. They claimed that the two men were, in fact, victims of a vicious police beating by plain-clothes officers who failed to identify themselves.

All charges against the men were eventually dropped.

More frustration came when the much publicised city-wide manhunt for the killer of Imette St Guillen, a white student, was seen to overshadow the investigation into an equally gruesome case in which two Chinese women were stabbed to death inside a makeshift bedroom at the back of a Chinese restaurant-supply warehouse.

Local politician John Liu, who has worked closely with Chen's family since the murder, had accused the city of having a callous attitude towards Asian workers, but regards last  week's developments as a positive step.

'There's no question it took the NYPD a long time to solve this case,' said Mr Liu.

'But the most important thing is that the suspects have been arrested and that the police did not let this case fall by the wayside.

'It sends a strong message that these cases are indeed prioritised by the NYPD, that the people who did attack this deliveryman are going to be brought to justice, and that deliverymen are not to be viewed as easy targets by these people,' Mr Liu said.



New York police charge pair with murder of Fujian immigrant