31°
Footage retrieved from several area surveillance cameras show Dior Alston and Malik Abel, both 21, following Vidal Nieves down Essex Street around 5 p.m. this past Saturday, Nov. 12, they said.
Alston then hops out, chases the single dad down and shoots him outside the Minyety Barbershop near Lehigh Street, investigators allege.
Nieves was rushed into surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center and died less than two hours later.
A second male victim, 45, was grazed and refused medical attention at the scene, responders said.
The shooter -- dressed all in black, including a ski mask -- fled on foot and then got into a getaway car, they said.
Nieves made it to Lehigh Street near Sussex Street, where he collapsed, according to an affidavit on file in Superior Court in Hackensack.
His killers tried to ditch the gun, their clothing and the vehicle with help from a third defendant, Rayshawn Powel-Myhand, a 19-year-old cashier from Hackensack, authorities charged.
Detectives from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office worked swiftly and deliberately with their Hackensack police colleagues.
They “retrieved and viewed dozens of video surveillance clips from the area of the shooting, as well as surrounding neighborhoods,” BCPO Detective Daniel Tanelli wrote in the affidavit.
The footage not only includes two vehicles that “interacted” with Nieves prior to the shooting: It also shows Alston actually firing the gunshots, Tanelli wrote.
A trace of the vehicles’ ownership, along with retrieved text messages, helped investigators identify Alston as the shooter and Abel as his getaway driver, the detective wrote.
Powel-Myhand, meanwhile, was identified as a conspirator who "aided in the murder of [Nieves] by cleaning one of the two vehicles involved after the shooting was completed,” Tanelli said.
Search warrants for the homes and properties of the defendants corroborated the trio’s involvement, he added. Each was also questioned separately before all three were charged on Thursday, the affidavit says.
Both Alston, a laborer who lives on Agar Place in South Hackensack, and Abel, an electrician from Maywood Avenue in Maywood, are charged with first-degree murder and weapons offenses, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said.
Both men are also charged with conspiracy and stalking, among other counts, for plotting and carrying out Nieves's killing, the prosecutor said.
Powel-Myhand is charged with hindering their arrests.
All three are being held in the Bergen County Jail pending first appearances in Central Judicial Processing Court in Hackensack.
Although the charges indicate the shooting was planned, neither Musella nor court papers filed by his staff disclose the suspected motive.
Nieves, who worked in Passaic, was buried on Thursday, Nov. 17, following a Catholic prayer service.
Born in Virginia Beach, VA, Nieves lived in Jersey City, East Rutherford and Hackensack before moving to Maywood three years ago, according to his obituary.
He is survived by his parents, Ricardo and Elizabeth, his daughter, Lillyannie Nieves, a sister, Ariela Nieves, grandfather, Victor Cordova and grandmother, Doitilia Nieves.
OBITUARY: Vidal R. Nieves (Shook's Cedar Grove Funeral Home)
Click here to follow Daily Voice Ridgewood and receive free news updates.
