Convicted killer escapes custody in Highbridge

By Ian Koski
Managing Editor

Police are combing the Bronx and upper Manhattan for accused murderer Kevin Saxon, who escaped May 2 from a van being driven through Highbridge by a pair of civilian investigators from the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Mr. Saxon, 33, was being brought back to a jail in Westcheter County when traffic on the Major Deegan Expressway prompted the investigators off the highway at Macombs Dam Bridge.

No one knows how the Harlem drug lord, who was serving a nine-year murder sentence and awaiting another murder trial that could add 117 years to his sentence, got out of his leg shackles and opened the van door. His hands still cuffed, Mr. Saxon made a break for it. After briefly giving suit, the investigators lost their prisoner on Ogden Avenue.

Mr. Saxon has not been seen since. He is described as 5-foot-11 and 270 pounds, bald and clean-shaven. He was wearing black pants and a black jacket. Police ask that anyone with information call the police hotline at (800) 577-TIPS.

Alleged Highbridge murderer nabbed in Dominican Republic

Police in the Dominican town of Los Rios, just outside of Santo Domingo, arrested lifelong Highbridge resident Albert Losada in early April after spotting him at a gas station there April 5.

The police recognized Mr. Losada from a photo that appeared on the front page of the Daily News a few weeks earlier naming Mr. Losada one of the ten most violent criminals wanted by the New York Police Department.

Although suspected in several other violent crimes in Highbridge, Mr. Losada was sought by detectives for the June 2001 murder of Celsio Perez in a bodega on Ogden Avenue at 162nd Street. According to the Daily News, Mr. Perez was shot at point-blank range for “saying something [Mr. Losada] didn’t like.”

Known on the street as “Chemba” (Spanish for “big lips”), Mr. Losada vanished after the murder of Mr. Perez. Dominican police arrested the 5-foot-8, 240-pound suspect amid a hail of bullets from Mr. Losada’s semiautomatic pistol.

Bronx prosecutors immediately indicted him while extradition proceedings began in the Dominican Republic.