After 23 Years, NYC Shooting Becomes Homicide

A woman who was shot after being sexually assaulted in 1992 became a homicide victim when she died in November, the New York City Medical Examiner’s office has decided. Charlene Thomas, who was 65 when she died, was 41 years old when she was attacked in her home by then-23-year-old Eric Shaw. He was sentenced to a maximum of 18 years in prison for attempted murder and sodomy but served additional time because of prison contraband offenses and state inmate records show that he was released on parole in March of 2015, reports the New York Daily News.

Police say Thomas died as a result of her gunshot wound, and the crime is now considered a homicide. It's not clear whether Shaw will face additional charges, reports the Daily News, which notes that in recent days, NYC authorities have decided that two other decades-old crimes were homicides because of deaths in 2015. The August death of a man shot in a nightclub in 1979 was ruled a homicide, as was the March death of Roy Evans, who was stabbed outside a Harlem bar in 1969. CBS New York reports that the medical examiner concluded that spinal cord injuries and sepsis from the stab wound contributed to the 75-year-old's death. (Last summer, a Pennsylvania man died from injuries he suffered in a car crash 50 years earlier.)