The authorities stated they had categorized the fatalities as a dislike crime following remains of two lady happened to be found in a severely burned automobile the other day.
A week after the systems of two transgender female were present in a poorly burned vehicle in Puerto Rico, the authorities said Thursday that they have arrested two guys relating to the killings along with transformed all of them up to the F.B.I.
The men, Juan Carlos Pagan Bonilla, 21, and Sean Diaz de Leon, 19, happened to be taken into custody on Wednesday but I have not started charged, according to Capt. Teddy Morales, the chief of criminal research for the police in Humacao, on Puerto Rico’s east coastline, the spot where the women’s keeps had been entirely on April 22.
The guy stated the F.B.I. have absorbed your situation and got investigating Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon for feasible civil rights violations.
“We tend to be classifying it a hate criminal activity simply because they are interacting making use of subjects, and when they realized these were transgender ladies, they chose to destroy all of them,” Captain Morales said on Thursday.
Law enforcement mentioned they were awaiting autopsy brings about figure out how the ladies had been slain. Activists need identified the ladies as Layla Pelaez, 21, and Serena Angelique Velazquez, 32, two pals who lived in nyc. Her remains happened to be discover after someone also known as 911 to document a burned automobile under a bridge on a desolate highway in Humacao, just before 5 a.m. on April 22, head Morales stated.
Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon was interacting with Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Pelaez in the evening before these people were killed and are tape-recorded on one with the women’s social media account, head Morales stated.
The guy mentioned law enforcement had also fastened Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon on the killings through security camera video footage and “scientific proof,” which he dropped to outline. Mr. Pagan Bonilla admitted to participating in the killings, and Mr. Diaz de Leon switched themselves in, the guy mentioned.
Limary Cruz-Rubio, a spokeswoman for all the F.B.I.’s San Juan area company, declined to go over the arrests but said the bureau regularly collaborates with local, condition and national agencies.
“The Bureau are and certainly will always be into criminal make which may drop within federal legislation,” she said. “However, all of our plan was we do not verify or reject the presence of investigations, to safeguard the ethics of any feasible investigative efforts.”
Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon cannot straight away feel hit for comment on Thursday nights, and it had not been instantly obvious as long as they had attorneys.
In the event the men are energized, it may portray a switching reason for the control of crimes against L.G.B.T.Q. people in Puerto Rico, which has a disturbing history of physical violence against homosexual and transgender someone, activists stated.
Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Pelaez comprise the third and next transgender individuals killed in Puerto Rico in the last two months, activists mentioned. These people were in addition believed to be the 7th and eighth transgender or gender-nonconforming individuals to happen killed in the United States in 2010, according to the people legal rights venture.
In earlier times 15 several months, 10 L.G.B.T.Q. folks have come murdered in Puerto Rico, per Pedro Julio Serrano, a gay legal rights activist. All but three regarding the deaths stay unsolved, the guy stated.
“These arrests tend to be one step within the right movement, nevertheless these murders need to be prosecuted as hate crimes,” Mr. Serrano said. “We desire the us government in order to complete the investigations within the additional seven murders of L.G.B.T.Q. someone about island and offer justice for several of these.”
Ms. Velazquez stayed in Queens and Ms. Pelaez in Bronx. Dating Over 60 sites Both got recently traveled to Puerto Rico, plus they happened to be likely to travel back once again to nyc after this month, based on family relations and activists.
Luz Melendez, 29, Ms. Pelaez’s relative, mentioned Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon happened to be detained after an area radio station published files of these on Facebook and individuals begun to phone the facility to understand them.
“We tend to be extremely appreciative from the efforts the authorities additionally the society invest locate exactly who did this,” she mentioned on Thursday.
She stated the photographs originated two video that Ms. Pelaez had submitted on her Snapchat and fb account, which revealed their and Ms. Velazquez socializing with Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon.
“we spotted the videos, therefore seemed like they certainly were spending some time together as pals,” she stated. “It felt regular. There was clearly tunes playing within the background. Everyone Else felt okay.”
She said law enforcement have told her household merely that the guys happened to be in national guardianship.
The killings arrived per month after Yampi Mendez Arocho, a 19-year-old transgender guy, got murdered in Moca, P.R., in accordance with the people Rights strategy.
In February, Alexa Negron Luciano, a well-known figure on Puerto Rico social media marketing who had been transgender and homeless, is recorded to dying after a McDonald’s customer reported that Ms. Negron had spied on the from inside the women’s place.
Ms. Negron’s last moments — presented into the headlights of a motor vehicle amid a cackle of fun — are posted on social networking, an undeniable fact that activists stated underscored the impunity homophobic attackers become whenever committing such criminal activities.