A cousin of former Camden Mayor Milton Milan was arrested Thursday night in Brooklyn, N.Y., in connection with the killing of a Camden man in February.

David Mendez, 36, whose last known address was in the 500 block of State Street in Camden, was arrested about 8:30 p. m. Thursday as he left an apartment building.

Mendez is charged with shooting to death Luis Ocasio, 24, of the Ferry Station Apartments, on Feb. 12. Ocasio was sitting in a Chevrolet Cavalier in the 1100 block of North 34th Street when he was shot several times in the chest by a masked man who opened fire from another vehicle.

Authorities believe it was Mendez who shot Ocasio with an AK-47-style assault rifle. A red-haired white or Hispanic woman was driving the car, said Greg Reinert, a spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office. Reinert had no comment on a motive for the shooting.

Mendez was being held Friday night at a federal prison in Brooklyn awaiting an extradition hearing. Mendez has been sought since 1993 on a parole violation warrant. He had been sentenced in October 1991 to four years in prison for drug possession. He was paroled from the Camden County Jail in October 1993, but he never reported to his parole officer.

Authorities say Mendez's capture could be the the breakthrough they have waited for in their investigation in the killing of South Camden heroin dealer Francisco " Pancho" Chamorro on Dec. 24, 1988.

"Now that he is in custody, I'm sure that he will be questioned because of all of the information that came out in the trial of Mayor Milan," Reinert said.

Camden County Prosecutor Lee Solomon, who was attending a state prosecutor's meeting in Atlantic City on Friday, could not be reached for comment.

Milan was questioned shortly after three masked men fired 77 bullets from automatic weapons, gunning down Chamorro. Milan, who had not yet been elected to public office when the killing occurred, has denied involvement.

But it is known that Milan was with Mendez, his cousin, that night. They were with a third man, Luis Medina, who owned an East Camden shoe store where Milan worked. Medina, now in jail, is a convicted felon and drug dealer.

An investigator's report at the time said the three men had been feuding with two other men who were at Chamorro's house the night of the killing.

A teenage girl told told investigators that Mendez, Milan and Medina later bragged about the killing. The girl said the three men mistakenly shot Chamorro as he went to move his Cadillac from the front of his home to a parking spot. They believed they were shooting at one of the other two men, who had recently been using Chamorro's car, she told investigators.

No one has been charged in Chamorro's slaying.

One of the men who police believe was an intended target in the hit, Abel "Nica" Figueroa, told the Courier-Post in a 1999 jailhouse interview that he saw Chamorro gunned down and placed Milan's Ford Bronco at the scene. Figueroa said it was the result of a feud over a shipment of drugs.

Milan has been in federal prison since Dec. 21, the day a jury convicted him of 14 counts of corruption. He was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.