62 year old Domingo Lopez Negron emerged from the district justice's office in Warminster, Bucks County late Wednesday after being charged with criminal homicide.
But there is something unusual about this case, the homicide victim died in June of 2009, 36 years after the bullet was fired.
Domingo Negron to Warminster Police Wednesday to face murder charges stemming from a shooting during a gang fight 37 years ago.
Prosecutors say on Mother's Day 1973, he shot Joseph Kwiatkowski, then 18, rendering him a paraplegic for the rest of his life, which ended in June of 2009.
The coroner ruled his death was caused by infections, the direct result of the gunshot wound.
Negron served a one year prison term for the shooting, but now the charge is murder.
His lawyer claims he was not even the trigger man, much less guilty of murder after 3 and a half decades.
"My client denies firing the shot. He denies all of the facts related to this presentment. He indicates that he does not know this individual, and certainly he denies being involved in this homicide in any way," says Craig Penglase, Negron's attorney.
The shooting took place on a corner of Warminster Street on May 13, 1973, during a fight between whites and Puerto Ricans. It was a time of growing racial tension there.
The case comes less than a year after a Philadelphia jury acquitted another man in a similar case.
William Barnes, age 73, was charged with murder in 2007 after a police officer he shot and paralyzed died from a urinary tract infection that was, according to an autopsy, a direct result of the paralysis Officer William Barclay suffered in the wake of the 1966 shooting.
Bucks County is pursuing the murder case anyway.
"There were no other causes for his death. He didn't have cancer; he wasn't involved in any other things that could have caused his death," said ADA David Zellis.
Kwiatkowski's family has been a driving force in getting prosecutors to pursue murder charges. In a posting on her Facebook page, Kwiatkowski's sister Rose Mahaffey says: "seeking justice and its coming."
Negron is being held on $2 million bail. At 62, he is a disabled factory worker with 4 adult children. He next court date is March 4th.
