Four Florida Job Corps Students Confess to Fatally Attacking 17-Year-Old With Machete and Burying Him Alive
Four Florida Job Corps students allegedly confessed to hacking a 17-year-old boy with a machete before burying him alive in a wooded area in June. The boy was later found dead.
Police say that three of the suspects, 20-year-old Kaheem Arbelo, 18-year-old Jonathan Lucas, and 19-year-old Christian Colon, provided videotaped confessions after they were taken into custody last week by Miami-Dade police, according to the Miami Herald.
Meanwhile, the fourth student, an 18-year-old woman named Desiray Strickland, was arrested Wednesday.
According to a Miami-Dade police spokeswoman, after the group killed Jose Amaya Guardado, Strickland and Arbelo then had sex in the woods before returning to campus, reports People.
In the police report, Miami-Dade Detective Juan Segovia wrote that the students lured Guardado into the woods on the night of June 28 and "ambushed the victim." They repeatedly hacked him with a machete and then forced him to lie down in a shallow grave.
"The victim made one last attempt to fight off the attackers," Detective Segovia wrote, "at which time, (Arbelo) struck the victim with the machete several more time unto the victim's face caved in."
Once the victim was buried, the students set their blood-stained clothes on fire and "got rid of the machete and the shovel," Segovia wrote.
Officials believe that the suspects, who all attended Homestead Job Corps, plotted for two weeks to kill their schoolmate. They also dug the grave and hid a machete in a wooded area near the Homestead Job Corps campus prior to the incident.
Investigators believe that the murder may have been an act of vengeance because the victim owed a debt to Arbelo.
All four students have been charged with second-degree murder.
Job Corps, a national live-in school and vocational training program for at-risk students between ages of 16 and 24, is run by the U.S. Department of Labor.
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