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Erick Acosta, 35, fled to Colombia after beating 40-year-old Crystal Ojeda to death with an object that local authorities have yet to identify in a public housing project on Lord Avenue near the Kill Van Kull.
It was shortly before 1 p.m. Oct. 9, 2020 that city police responding to a request for a welfare check found the brutally beaten Ojeda.
The mother of two, formerly of Jersey City, had been struck in the head and on her body with a blunt object, a medical examiner found.
A manhunt was immediately launched with Acosta as the target.
Colombian authorities arrested Acosta at the request of the United States on Oct. 22, 2022, two years after the killing.
It took another year and a half before he was finally extradited.
Members of the U.S. Marshals Service New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force took Acosta into custody after he was flown in to Newark Airport on Wednesday, April 10, Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez said.
Acosta is charged with murder, weapons offenses and evidence tampering. He remained held Friday in the Hudson County Correctional Facility in Kearny pending a first appearance in Central Judicial Processing Court in Jersey City.
Suarez credited her Homicide Unit, the Marshals Service and U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip Sellinger’s office with the investigation and the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs and Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section’s Judicial Attaché’s Office in Bogota, Colombia, for working with authorities there to secure Acosta’s arrest and extradition.
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