A New York man who’s been wanted in Maine the last five months in connection with a homicide in Augusta late last year has been arrested in New York City.
Aubrey Armstrong, 27, was arrested Friday morning in a home in Queens, charged with being a fugitive from justice, according to a news release from Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
According to the Queens District Attorney’s Office, Armstrong, who is also known as Aubry Armstrong, was arraigned on Friday in criminal court in Queens and is next due in court Oct. 3 in New York state.
Armstrong is the fourth person to be charged in connection with the death of Joseph Marceau, 31, of Augusta. Marceau was beaten to death Nov. 23 in a Washington Street apartment in what authorities said was a drug-related homicide.
McCausland said Tuesday that Armstrong is contesting extradition to Maine.
“His arrival here will be at some point, but we don’t know when that will be,” he said in an interview.
The charge Armstrong is answering in New York is being a fugitive from justice, McCausland said. Armstrong will not be charged with murder until he is in Maine.
“The extradition process has its own timeline, and we’re not sure when this will be resolved or when he will be returned to Maine,” he said.
Three other people were charged with murder previously in the Marceau case.
On Jan. 26, Zina Marie Fritze, 27, and Michael Sean McQuade, 45, both of Augusta, pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder. A day later, Fritze died after she was found unresponsive and hanging from a bed sheet in her cell in the Kennebec County jail. She had not been considered to be a significant threat to herself, jail officials said.
In February, Damik Davis, 26, of New York, pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder.
Both Davis and McQuade are being held at the Kennebec County jail without bail.
Around 8 p.m. Nov. 23, neighbors reported a disturbance in a fourth-floor apartment at 75 Washington St. The body of Marceau, who was a resident of Winthrop Street, was found in the apartment.
Augusta police and a state police dog searched the neighborhood, and Davis was arrested a short time later. Police continued searching for two other people who were occupants of the apartment.
Those tenants were Fritze and McQuade, who were arrested Jan. 22, 2016, on alleged probation violations on the same day when indictments against the pair were handed up by a grand jury in Kennebec County; the indictments were sealed until Jan. 25. Police had questioned Fritze and McQuade two days after Marceau’s body was found, but they had been released without charges.
On Feb. 16, 2016, authorities identified Armstrong as the fourth person involved in the murder. A Kennebec County grand jury indicted Armstrong, who goes by the street name “Butta.”
At the time, McCausland said Armstrong had probably returned to New York, and police had been working with both the New York police and the U.S. Marshals Service to find him. Additional information about the circumstances of Armstrong’s arrest in Queens was not immediately available.
Few details about Marceau’s death have been released, although police at the time said it was a drug-related killing. Assistant Attorney General John Alsop said earlier this year that Marceau had been beaten to death, and no knives or firearms were involved.
Marceau, who had lived earlier in Gardiner, lived about a mile away in an apartment on Winthrop Street.
Jessica Lowell — 621-5632
Twitter: @JLowellKJ
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