Law enforcement mentioned that they had categorized the fatalities as a dislike criminal activity following the stays of two people had been present in a badly burned vehicles last week.
Each week following figures of two transgender ladies had been within a defectively burned vehicle in Puerto Rico, the authorities said Thursday which they got detained two men relating to the killings together with turned them to the F.B.I.
The people, Juan Carlos Pagan Bonilla, 21, and Sean Diaz de Leon, 19, were taken into custody on Wednesday but have maybe not already been charged, based on Capt. Teddy Morales, the main of criminal research for your police in Humacao, on Puerto Rico’s east coastline, where in actuality the women’s stays happened to be found on April 22.
He stated the F.B.I. got bought out the outcome and is investigating Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon for possible civil rights violations.
“We is classifying it a hate crime since they were interacting together with the sufferers, and when they learned they were transgender girls, they chose to kill all of them,” head Morales stated on Thursday.
Law enforcement stated they certainly were waiting around for autopsy brings about figure out how the women had been killed. Activists has identified the ladies as Layla Pelaez, 21, and Serena Angelique Velazquez, 32, two friends just who lived in nyc. Her keeps were discover after someone also known as 911 to submit a burned vehicle under a bridge on a desolate path in Humacao, just before 5 a.m. on April 22, master Morales said.
Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon was in fact socializing with Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Pelaez in the night before they were murdered and comprise taped on a single regarding the women’s social media marketing account, Captain Morales mentioned.
He said law enforcement had additionally tied up Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon toward killings through surveillance camera video footage and “scientific proof,” that he declined to detail. Mr. Pagan Bonilla confessed to playing the killings, and Mr. Diaz de Leon turned themselves in, the guy mentioned.
Limary Cruz-Rubio, a spokeswoman when it comes to F.B.I.’s San Juan field company, dropped to talk about the arrests but stated the agency consistently collaborates with regional, condition and federal agencies.
“The Bureau is and certainly will often be contemplating violent conduct that could drop within federal jurisdiction,” she stated. “However, our very own coverage was we League City escort reviews do not confirm or reject the existence of research, to protect the ethics of any possible investigative effort.”
Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon cannot right away become hit for touch upon Thursday nights, plus it wasn’t instantly clear if they got attorneys.
In the event that men are billed, it may express a switching point in the maneuvering of criminal activities against L.G.B.T.Q. people in Puerto Rico, with a disturbing reputation for physical violence against gay and transgender men, activists said.
Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Pelaez happened to be the 3rd and next transgender folks slain in Puerto Rico in the last two months, activists stated. These were furthermore thought to be the 7th and 8th transgender or gender-nonconforming individuals have been slain in america this current year, in accordance with the Human Rights promotion.
In past times 15 period, 10 L.G.B.T.Q. people have become slain in Puerto Rico, according to Pedro Julio Serrano, a gay liberties activist. Just about three associated with the fatalities stay unsolved, he said.
“These arrests tend to be a step in best movement, nevertheless these murders have to be prosecuted as dislike crimes,” Mr. Serrano stated. “We need the government to complete the research when you look at the more seven murders of L.G.B.T.Q. folks throughout the island and serve fairness for several of them.”
Ms. Velazquez stayed in Queens and Ms. Pelaez within the Bronx. Both had lately journeyed to Puerto Rico, plus they are about to travel back into nyc afterwards this thirty days, according to family relations and activists.
Luz Melendez, 29, Ms. Pelaez’s cousin, stated Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon had been detained after a regional broadcast place uploaded imagery of them on Twitter and individuals started to name the station to identify them.
“We were super appreciative associated with the services your officials together with area invest to track down whom performed this,” she stated on Thursday.
She said the photographs originated two video clips that Ms. Pelaez have published on her Snapchat and Twitter profile, which demonstrated this lady and Ms. Velazquez socializing with Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon.
“I watched the video clips, and it also seemed like they were spending some time together as family,” she said. “It appeared typical. There is songs playing within the history. People appeared great.”
She stated the police had told her family members just that the people are in federal custody.
The killings arrived 30 days after Yampi Mendez Arocho, a 19-year-old transgender guy, got murdered in Moca, P.R., in accordance with the individual liberties strategy.
In March, Alexa Negron Luciano, a popular figure on Puerto Rico social media marketing who was simply transgender and homeless, was shot to death after a McDonald’s customer complained that Ms. Negron got spied on the for the women’s space.
Ms. Negron’s last moments — framed in the headlights of an auto amid a cackle of laughter — had been posted on social media, an undeniable fact that activists said underscored the impunity homophobic attackers believe whenever committing such criminal activities.