SATURDAY, DEC. 6, 2003 Daytona Beach News-Journal
THE INDEPENDENT VOICE OF VOLUSIA & FLAGLER COUNTIES
Slaying suspect jailed
Deputies question troubled man in 3 deaths
http://www.news-journalonline.com/special/ochomicide/index.html
A Jehovah's Witness with a history of mental illness who sometimes received rides from a West Volusia family was named Thursday as a suspect in their slayings.
(see story below/it's the same story with updated headline...)
Man faces first-degree murder charges
in deaths of three Orange City family members
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/03NewsHEAD02120503.htm
By KRISTEN MOCZYNSKI and PATRICIO G. BALONA
Staff Writers
Last update: 05 December 2003
DELAND -- A man with a history of mental illness, who sometimes received rides from a West Volusia family found dead this week, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder today.
Orlando Carrasquillo, 28, who had been arrested on unrelated charges a day earlier, was formally charged this morning in the deaths of a woman and her two sons on Sunday, a spokesman for Volusia County Sheriff's Office said.
During an afternoon press conference, investigators said Carrasquillo confessed to the crime and said he believed he was "the anti-Christ." Investigators also said Carrasquillo's mother, who is being kept at a safe house, told them her son said he had made a pact with the devil.
Five knives were found at the scene of the triple homicide, including two that had blood on them, investigators said. Parts of a gun also were found at the mental health facility where Carrasquillo has been living. The family members had been shot and stabbed.
Fellow church members said they had heard the man make threats about harming the family. "We were told that (Carrasquillo) had said that he was going to get a weapon and kill a family," said church elder and family friend Eugenio Muriel.
Volusia County Sheriff's investigators took Carrasquillo into custody Thursday afternoon at a Seminole County mental health facility on an outstanding warrant for resisting arrest with violence, Sheriff's Lt. Gordon Meyer said. He is being held at the Seminole County jail without bail.
Late Thursday, investigators were questioning Carrasquillo in connection with the slayings of Carmen Negron, 63, and her sons Gilberto Vergara-Negron, 28, and Yamir Orlando Vergara-Negron, 26. The three were killed in their home on Biscayne Avenue near Orange City sometime Sunday, investigators said.
The DeBary Spanish-speaking congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses recently tried to help Carrasquillo with his drug problem, and when he did not cooperate, he was expelled from the church, Muriel said. But Muriel said Carrasquillo subsequently returned to ask the congregation's forgiveness and "as far as I know, he was still a member of the church."
He said the Negron family knew Carrasquillo and may have offered him help with his drug problem as well.
"They were very kind and giving people and it would not surprise me to know that they were trying to do good for him," Muriel said. He went on to say they were a very close family. "Wherever one went, the three of them went," Muriel said.
Investigators say Carrasquillo has a violent past and may have been at the victims' home within the past month. Carrasquillo knew the men of the family and went to their home to ask for rides occasionally, Meyer said.
Investigators learned about Carrasquillo from family and friends, and deputies had been searching for him since Monday. His last known address was in Sanford, Meyer said. Carrasquillo was peacefully taken into custody at the mental health facility, which the Sheriff's Office is not naming.
Carrasquillo was taken into custody under the state's Baker Act in March after he was found walking down a Deltona street in bloody clothing. He had attempted to commit suicide and taunted deputies to shoot him, according to a sheriff's report.
Deputies had to use a Taser gun to subdue Carrasquillo, who said he harmed himself because his fiancee had broken up with him and he lost his job, the report states. Carrasquillo later became physically violent with the nurses and paramedics treating his injuries.
Ernest Anderson, a longtime Deltona resident who lived near Carrasquillo last March on Crawford Street, described him as "strange"and said he often appeared to be intoxicated. "He never seemed to have a job. He didn't seem to be anything, just weird."
Anderson recalled the March incident. He said officers followed Carrasquillo to his back yard where he pulled out a knife and cut his own forearms.
A warrant charging Carrasquillo with resisting arrest was issued Wednesday, Sheriff's spokesman Gary Davidson said. Meyer did not elaborate on why the warrant was not issued in March.
Evidence collected from the Negrons' home and car was sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab in Orlando for analysis. The vehicle, a 1995 Honda Civic that Gilberto drove, was missing from the house Monday and found abandoned Tuesday in Orlando.
Autopsies on all three bodies have been completed. Family and friends are arranging a funeral for Saturday at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses in Orange City.
Roberto Negron, Carmen's brother and only relative here, said his three sisters in Puerto Rico could not afford to travel to Florida to attend their eldest sibling's funeral.
A tearful Roberto Negron, speaking through a translator, said he visited his sister often and last saw her the Thursday before she was killed.
"The pain is not going to go away for a long time," Muriel said.
Lyda Negron-Vergara, who is not a relative but lives near their former neighborhood in Cortijo, Bayamon, in Puerto Rico, expressed her sympathies by telephone.
"The crime did not happen in our neighborhood but it surely has shocked us," she said. "Everyone knew the family to be an upstanding and good family. We are not related, but it is very heart-breaking to lose loved ones, especially at a time nearing Christmas."
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kristen.moczynski@news-jrnl.com
patricio.balona@news-jrnl.com
-- Staff Writer Mark Harper contributed to this report.
3 JWs Murdered Last Night-Orange City, FL
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