The authorities mentioned they’d labeled the fatalities as a detest crime following remains of two women are within a badly burned auto last week.
A week after the bodies of two transgender women were within a badly burned vehicles in Puerto Rico, the authorities said Thursday they have arrested two guys in connection with the killings along with turned them over to the F.B.I.
The men, Juan Carlos Pagan Bonilla, 21, and Sean Diaz de Leon, 19, were used into custody on Wednesday but have maybe not been energized, per Capt. Teddy Morales, the main of violent investigations when it comes to authorities in Humacao, on Puerto Rico’s eastern coastline, where the women’s remains had been entirely on April 22.
He mentioned the F.B.I. have absorbed the fact and ended up being examining Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon for possible civil rights violations.
“We include classifying it as a detest crime because they were socializing making use of victims, and once they found out they were transgender female, they chose to destroy all of them,” chief Morales stated on Thursday.
The police mentioned they certainly were waiting for autopsy leads to decide how the women was basically murdered. Activists need determined the ladies as Layla Pelaez, 21, and Serena Angelique Velazquez, 32, two family just who lived in new york. Her remains are located after people also known as 911 to report a burned vehicles under a bridge on a desolate roadway in Humacao, just before 5 a.m. on April 22, Captain Morales mentioned.
Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon was in fact socializing with Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Pelaez from the nights before these were slain and are taped on one on the women’s social networking reports, Captain Morales stated.
The guy mentioned law enforcement got additionally fastened Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon towards the killings through security camera video footage and “scientific evidence,” which he decreased to outline. Mr. Pagan Bonilla confessed to taking part in the killings, and Mr. Diaz de Leon transformed himself in, the guy stated.
Limary Cruz-Rubio, a spokeswoman for F.B.I.’s San Juan area office, decreased to discuss the arrests but said the bureau routinely collaborates with neighborhood, state and federal firms.
“The agency was and can always be thinking about criminal run that may drop within national legislation,” she mentioned. “However, our plan try we really do not confirm or deny the existence of research, to guard the ethics of every possible investigative energy http://datingmentor.org/koreancupid-review/.”
Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon could not instantly end up being achieved for discuss Thursday night, therefore wasn’t instantly obvious if they got lawyers.
If the guys are billed, it might represent a switching point in the managing of criminal activities against L.G.B.T.Q. folks in Puerto Rico, with a disturbing history of assault against homosexual and transgender men, activists stated.
Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Pelaez happened to be the third and fourth transgender men murdered in Puerto Rico in the last 2 months, activists said. These were also considered to be the 7th and eighth transgender or gender-nonconforming individuals currently killed in the usa this year, according to research by the people liberties Campaign.
Prior to now 15 months, 10 L.G.B.T.Q. people have already been murdered in Puerto Rico, in accordance with Pedro Julio Serrano, a gay legal rights activist. All but three associated with fatalities stays unsolved, he stated.
“These arrests are a step during the best movement, but these murders have to be prosecuted as dislike criminal activities,” Mr. Serrano stated. “We urge the us government to finish the investigations into the more seven murders of L.G.B.T.Q. anyone from the isle and offer justice for several of those.”
Ms. Velazquez stayed in Queens and Ms. Pelaez from inside the Bronx. Both had lately traveled to Puerto Rico, and additionally they happened to be looking to travel back into New York later on this month, in accordance with family and activists.
Luz Melendez, 29, Ms. Pelaez’s relative, mentioned Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon comprise detained after an area broadcast section submitted photos of these on myspace and folks started initially to phone the place to understand them.
“We tend to be very appreciative of the jobs that authorities and also the people put in discover whom performed this,” she mentioned on Thursday.
She said the photographs originated from two video that Ms. Pelaez got uploaded on her Snapchat and myspace account, which revealed the girl and Ms. Velazquez socializing with Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon.
“we noticed the clips, therefore appeared like these were spending time with each other as friends,” she said. “It appeared regular. There is songs playing in the back ground. Folks seemed good.”
She mentioned the authorities got told her group merely the men happened to be in national guardianship.
The killings arrived 30 days after Yampi Mendez Arocho, a 19-year-old transgender guy, got murdered in Moca, P.R., according to the person Rights Campaign.
In February, Alexa Negron Luciano, a popular figure on Puerto Rico social media marketing who was simply transgender and homeless, is shot to passing after a McDonald’s client complained that Ms. Negron have spied on her behalf in women’s area.
Ms. Negron’s best minutes — presented during the headlights of an automobile amid a cackle of laughter — comprise published on social media, a fact that activists said underscored the impunity homophobic attackers believe whenever committing this type of criminal activities.