Men sought for questioning in NYC slays of burned ex

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Police say they want to question two men in the grisly slayings of a former college basketball player and his female pal, whose bodies were found riddled with bullets and burned beyond recognition in a car in The Bronx in May.

Cops on Thursday said they are seeking 30-year-old Jahmel Sanders and 34-year-old Steven Santiago for questioning in the murders, which law-enforcement sources at the time tied to a purported gang war sparked by a stolen purse.

Police released surveillance photos and old mugshots depicting Sanders and Santiago, although neither man has been named a suspect in the case yet.

Around 4:19 a.m. May 16, police responded to a call of a car on fire on Shore Road near the Pelham Split Rock Golf Course. Inside the Honda Accord, they discovered the charred bodies of Jesse Parrilla and Nikki Huang, both 22.

Parrilla died of gunshot wounds to the head and chest, while his friend was shot in the head and neck. Both suffered extensive burns to their bodies.

Law-enforcement sources told The Post at the time that the victims was executed in a series of retaliatory shootings after Huang complained to her gangster friends that members of a rival gang stole her purse near a housing project in Manhattan.

The sources said Parrilla played no part in the dispute between the Up the Hill and Down the Hill gangs and was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Parrilla played basketball for one year at Genesee Community College and had no criminal record.

His mother, Michelle Morales, who owned the car the pair was killed in, said her son knew Huang from middle school.

"He was a good-hearted person just helping a friend out with a ride," she said through tears. "I don't think he was aware of anything. He had no idea what was going on because he would never put himself in a situation like that."

Sources told The Post that after Huang was mugged on the Lower East Side in early May by suspected members of the Down the Hill crew, instead of going to the police, she went to her pals in the Up the Hill gang for justice.

A series of shootings followed, beginning with the killing of 39-year-old reputed member of the Down the Hill gang Brandon Atkinson, who was gunned down in Alphabet City.

The Down the Hill crew quickly retaliated by allegedly shooting two suspected Up the Hill members on Pike Street.

More violence followed when Down the Hill members reportedly snatched Huang while she was hanging out with Parrilla and forced her at gunpoint to get a friend of hers to leave his house in Maspeth, Queens, resulting in his shooting.

Hours later, Huang and Parrilla were driven to The Bronx, where they were executed inside the car and set on fire.

Huang worked at Wa Lung Kitchen, a Chinese restaurant in the Lower East Side owned by her mother, Amy Chan, who also owns Nails by Nikki, a nearby nail salon.

Earlier this month, Chan griped about the news coverage of the unsolved gangland-style murder, arguing that it was "so unfair" that her daughter, who was a victim, was being blamed for what had happened.

Chan told PIX11 that on the morning of her daughter's killing, Huang had just been dropped off at home by Parrilla when she got a call from his cellphone asking her to come back downstairs.

Not knowing that Parrilla had been carjacked by suspected gang members minutes earlier, Huang went to meet him. Her mother said before leaving the apartment, she took off her necklace and placed it on a floor mat, "knowing she was probably walking into danger.

"Another piece of info about Nikki, she would never ever not be there for a friend that she thought may be in trouble," Chan wrote in an Instagram message to PIX11. "If she did, she may still be alive today and never went back downstairs that tragic night after receiving the call from Jesse's phone."

Chan said her daughter worked three jobs to save up for an apartment, loved her brothers and cousins and "had so much life ahead of her."