The authorities mentioned they’d classified the deaths as a dislike crime after the keeps of two girls happened to be present a terribly burned auto last week.
Per week after the bodies of two transgender lady comprise present a badly burned auto in Puerto Rico, the police said Thursday that they had detained two people associated with the killings along with switched them to the F.B.I.
The males, Juan Carlos Pagan Bonilla, 21, and Sean Diaz de Leon, 19, are taken into guardianship on Wednesday but I have not started energized, in accordance with Capt. Teddy Morales, the principle of criminal investigations the police in Humacao, on Puerto Rico’s eastern coast, where the women’s remains were available on April 22.
He stated the F.B.I. have bought out the case and is exploring Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon for possible civil rights violations.
“We are classifying it a dislike criminal activity because they chicas escort Scottsdale AZ had been interacting using sufferers, and once they found out these people were transgender women, they decided to destroy all of them,” Captain Morales mentioned on Thursday.
Law enforcement stated they were looking forward to autopsy results to decide how the ladies was basically killed. Activists need determined the women as Layla Pelaez, 21, and Serena Angelique Velazquez, 32, two family whom lived in nyc. Their unique keeps were discovered after one known as 911 to report a burned automobile under a bridge on a desolate roadway in Humacao, prior to 5 a.m. on April 22, chief Morales mentioned.
Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon had been socializing with Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Pelaez from the night before they were slain and are tape-recorded on one associated with the women’s social media marketing profile, chief Morales mentioned.
He stated the authorities had additionally tied up Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon into the killings through security camera footage and “scientific facts,” which he declined to detail. Mr. Pagan Bonilla confessed to participating in the killings, and Mr. Diaz de Leon turned themselves in, he said.
Limary Cruz-Rubio, a spokeswoman when it comes down to F.B.I.’s San Juan industry workplace, decreased to go over the arrests but said the agency consistently collaborates with local, county and national agencies.
“The Bureau was and certainly will always be into criminal make which might fall within national jurisdiction,” she said. “However, all of our rules was we really do not confirm or refute the presence of investigations, to safeguard the ethics of any possible investigative energy.”
Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon cannot immediately feel hit for comment on Thursday night, plus it wasn’t instantly clear when they got solicitors.
In the event the men are charged, it may represent a switching part of the management of crimes against L.G.B.T.Q. folks in Puerto Rico, that has a disturbing history of physical violence against gay and transgender everyone, activists said.
Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Pelaez are the 3rd and next transgender anyone murdered in Puerto Rico in the last 2 months, activists mentioned. These people were in addition thought to be the 7th and 8th transgender or gender-nonconforming individuals to being murdered in the usa in 2010, based on the people legal rights venture.
Prior to now 15 period, 10 L.G.B.T.Q. men and women have been murdered in Puerto Rico, in accordance with Pedro Julio Serrano, a gay legal rights activist. Just about three on the fatalities continue to be unsolved, the guy stated.
“These arrests become one step inside right way, but these murders need to be prosecuted as hate criminal activities,” Mr. Serrano stated. “We need the us government to finish the investigations from inside the more seven murders of L.G.B.T.Q. people on the area and offer fairness for all of those.”
Ms. Velazquez stayed in Queens and Ms. Pelaez from inside the Bronx. Both got not too long ago traveled to Puerto Rico, and they comprise likely to fly back into New York afterwards this thirty days, according to members of the family and activists.
Luz Melendez, 29, Ms. Pelaez’s cousin, said Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon happened to be detained after a regional radio station published photos of these on Twitter and other people begun to name the place to recognize all of them.
“We is awesome appreciative with the operate that the authorities in addition to people added discover which performed this,” she said on Thursday.
She stated the images originated two films that Ms. Pelaez got published on the Snapchat and Facebook records, which confirmed the girl and Ms. Velazquez socializing with Mr. Pagan Bonilla and Mr. Diaz de Leon.
“I spotted the movies, and it appeared like they certainly were spending some time together as friends,” she said. “It felt normal. There clearly was tunes playing inside credentials. People appeared okay.”
She stated the authorities had told her families best your boys were in federal guardianship.
The killings arrived a month after Yampi Mendez Arocho, a 19-year-old transgender guy, is slain in Moca, P.R., according to research by the people Rights strategy.
In March, Alexa Negron Luciano, a well-known figure on Puerto Rico social networking who was simply transgender and homeless, ended up being recorded to demise after a McDonald’s visitors complained that Ms. Negron had spied on the from inside the women’s place.
Ms. Negron’s best moments — framed into the headlights of a car or truck amid a cackle of fun — had been posted on social media marketing, a fact that activists mentioned underscored the impunity homophobic attackers become whenever committing this type of criminal activities.
