The authorities mentioned that they had classified the deaths as a detest crime after the remains of two girls comprise present in a severely burned vehicles a week ago.
Per week following body of two transgender female comprise present in a severely burned car in Puerto Rico, law enforcement said Thursday that they had arrested two males in connection with the killings and had switched all of them up to the F.B.I.
The guys, Juan Carlos Pagan Bonilla, 21, and Sean Diaz de Leon, 19, had been used into custody on Wednesday but have perhaps not been energized, according to Capt. Teddy Morales, the main of unlawful investigations for police in Humacao, on Puerto Rico’s east coastline, in which the women’s keeps are available on April 22.
The guy mentioned the F.B.I. have absorbed the actual situation and was investigating Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon for feasible civil-rights violations.
“We are classifying it as a hate criminal activity simply because they had been socializing using sufferers, and when they found out these people were transgender females, they decided to destroy all of them,” chief Morales mentioned on Thursday.
The police stated they certainly were waiting around for autopsy leads to determine how the women had been slain. Activists has recognized the women as Layla Pelaez, 21, and Serena Angelique Velazquez, 32, two buddies whom lived in New York City. Their remains are located after individuals also known as 911 to submit a burned vehicles under a bridge on a desolate highway in Humacao, just before 5 a.m. on April 22, master Morales mentioned.
Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon have been interacting with Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Pelaez in the evening before they were murdered and had been taped using one for the women’s social media marketing profile, master Morales said.
He stated the police had also tied up Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon with the killings through security camera footage and “scientific proof,” which he declined to outline. Mr. Pagan Bonilla confessed to playing the killings, and Mr. Diaz de Leon turned himself in, he mentioned.
Limary Cruz-Rubio, a spokeswoman for F.B.I.’s San Juan industry office, dropped to talk about the arrests but stated the agency routinely collaborates with neighborhood, state and national companies.
“The agency try and can continually be thinking about violent behavior that could drop within federal jurisdiction,” she stated. “However, all of our plan is we really do not confirm or refute the presence of research, to safeguard the integrity of every feasible investigative effort.”
Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon would never immediately feel achieved for touch upon Thursday night, therefore was not immediately obvious should they had attorneys.
In the event the men are energized, it can express a turning point in the maneuvering of criminal activities against L.G.B.T.Q. folks in Puerto Rico, that has a disturbing history of assault against homosexual and transgender men and women, activists mentioned.
Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Pelaez comprise the 3rd and next transgender folk killed in Puerto Rico within the last few 2 months, activists stated. These people were in addition believed to be the 7th and eighth transgender or gender-nonconforming visitors to currently murdered in america this current year, in line with the people Rights strategy.
Prior to now 15 several months, 10 L.G.B.T.Q. folks have become slain in Puerto Rico, per Pedro Julio Serrano, a gay legal rights activist. All but three in the fatalities stay unsolved, he said.
“These arrests include a step inside the best path, but these murders need to be prosecuted as detest crimes,” Mr. Serrano stated. “We craving government entities in order to complete the research into the other seven murders of L.G.B.T.Q. men throughout the area and provide fairness for several of them.”
Ms. Velazquez lived-in Queens and Ms. Pelaez in Bronx. https://datingmentor.org/tr/bondage-com-inceleme/ Both had recently journeyed to Puerto Rico, as well as are planning to fly back into ny afterwards this thirty days, in accordance with household members and activists.
Luz Melendez, 29, Ms. Pelaez’s cousin, mentioned Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon comprise arrested after an area radio station published artwork ones on myspace and other people begun to phone the station to determine them.
“We include awesome appreciative of operate the officials and the neighborhood devote discover whom did this,” she said on Thursday.
She said the images originated in two movies that Ms. Pelaez got posted on the Snapchat and Twitter reports, which showed this lady and Ms. Velazquez interacting with Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon.
“I noticed the movies, therefore appeared like these people were hanging out collectively as pals,” she stated. “It appeared normal. There seemed to be musical playing in back ground. People felt okay.”
She mentioned law enforcement got informed her parents merely the men were in federal custody.
The killings arrived 30 days after Yampi Mendez Arocho, a 19-year-old transgender guy, ended up being killed in Moca, P.R., according to research by the people liberties venture.
In March, Alexa Negron Luciano, a well-known figure on Puerto Rico social media marketing who was simply transgender and homeless, was actually recorded to dying after a McDonald’s consumer reported that Ms. Negron got spied on her for the women’s space.
Ms. Negron’s last minutes — framed for the headlights of an automible amid a cackle of laughter — are submitted on social networking, an undeniable fact that activists said underscored the impunity homophobic attackers feel whenever committing these crimes.
