The police said that they had labeled the fatalities as a hate criminal activity following keeps of two lady comprise present in a badly burned auto a week ago.
Each week following the bodies of two transgender ladies had been present in a badly burned vehicles in Puerto Rico, the police stated Thursday they got arrested two males relating to the killings and had switched all of them up to the F.B.I.
The boys, Juan Carlos Pagan Bonilla, 21, and Sean Diaz de Leon, 19, were taken into custody on Wednesday but I have not been recharged, in accordance with Capt. Teddy Morales, the chief of unlawful investigations for the authorities in Humacao, on Puerto Rico’s east coastline, the spot where the women’s keeps are found on April 22.
The guy said the F.B.I. had bought out the way it is and ended up being examining Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon for feasible civil-rights violations.
“We tend to be classifying it as a hate crime because they had been socializing using victims, and once they found out they were transgender ladies, they chose to destroy all of them,” master Morales stated on Thursday.
The authorities said they certainly were awaiting autopsy leads to determine how the ladies was indeed slain. Activists bring determined the ladies as Layla Pelaez, 21, and Serena Angelique Velazquez, 32, two family which lived in nyc. Their particular keeps are discovered after people known as 911 to document a burned vehicles under a bridge on a desolate path in Humacao, right before 5 a.m. on April 22, master Morales said.
Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon was basically socializing with Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Pelaez regarding night before they were slain and comprise tape-recorded using one in the women’s social media marketing accounts, head Morales stated.
He said the authorities had furthermore fastened Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon to the killings through security camera footage and “scientific research,” which he dropped to outline. Mr. Pagan Bonilla confessed to playing the killings, and Mr. Diaz de Leon transformed themselves in, the guy stated.
Limary Cruz-Rubio, a spokeswoman for all the F.B.I.’s San Juan field workplace, declined to go over the arrests but mentioned the agency consistently collaborates with neighborhood, state and federal firms.
“The Bureau is and will always be thinking about criminal conduct which may fall within national jurisdiction,” she said. “However, our very own policy try we really do not confirm or refute the presence of investigations, to guard the stability of any possible investigative efforts.”
Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon would never immediately become hit for discuss Thursday nights, also it was not straight away obvious when they got attorneys.
When the guys are energized, it might signify a flipping point in the managing of crimes against L.G.B.T.Q. folks in Puerto Rico, that has a disturbing reputation of physical violence against gay and transgender folks, activists said.
Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Pelaez were the third and last transgender group killed in Puerto Rico in the last 2 months, activists stated. These were furthermore believed to be the 7th and eighth transgender or gender-nonconforming people to are killed in america this present year, in line with the peoples Rights venture.
Prior to now 15 several months, 10 L.G.B.T.Q. people have started murdered in Puerto Rico, per Pedro Julio Serrano, a gay rights activist. Just about three with the deaths remain unresolved, the guy stated.
“These arrests is a step inside correct movement, but these murders need to be prosecuted as hate crimes,” Mr. Serrano said. “We craving government entities to finish the investigations during the different seven murders of L.G.B.T.Q. men regarding the island and serve justice for every of those.”
Ms. Velazquez stayed in Queens and Ms. Pelaez into the Bronx. Both had not too long ago moved to Puerto Rico, and additionally they happened to be intending to fly to nyc afterwards this month, in accordance with family and activists.
Luz Melendez, 29, Ms. Pelaez’s relative, mentioned Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon are detained after a regional broadcast facility posted photographs of them on Facebook and people started to phone the place to spot them.
“We include extremely appreciative in the efforts that authorities therefore the people place in to obtain exactly who did this,” she stated on Thursday.
She stated the images came from two films that Ms. Pelaez got posted on the Snapchat and myspace account, which revealed her and Ms. Velazquez interacting with Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon.
“we noticed the films, also it appeared like they were hanging out along as buddies,” she mentioned. “It felt typical. There was clearly songs playing within the credentials. Every Person appeared good.”
She stated the police had informed her parents only that men are in national custody.
The killings came monthly after Yampi Mendez Arocho, a 19-year-old transgender people, is slain in Moca, P.R., based on the peoples liberties venture.
In March, Alexa Negron Luciano, a well-known figure on Puerto Rico social https://www.datingmentor.org/nl/chatango-overzicht media who was transgender and homeless, is shot to dying after a McDonald’s client complained that Ms. Negron had spied on the in the women’s area.
Ms. Negron’s last times — presented into the headlights of an automible amid a cackle of fun — had been posted on social media, a fact that activists mentioned underscored the impunity homophobic attackers think when committing this type of criminal activities.