MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) — In an effort to keep away from a life sentence, a girl accused of taking part within the machete killing of a South Florida teen virtually seven years in the past is able to take a plea deal, in response to her lawyer.
Desiray Strickland was 19 when she and 4 others have been arrested following the June 2015 loss of life of 17-year-old Jose Amaya Guardado. Police stated he was hacked to loss of life and buried in a shallow grave in Homestead.
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“I did not kill that boy, I promise!” Strickland screamed at a Miami-Dade detective in a police interrogation video.
This week, Strickland’s lawyer instructed Circuit Judge Cristina Miranda that she plans to plead responsible to conspiracy to homicide, which may ship her to jail for 15 years, in response to CBS4 news accomplice The Miami Herald.
The subsequent listening to within the case is scheduled for late June. Strickland stays in jail.
Strickland and 4 others have been indicted by a grand jury on first-degree homicide fees. Prosecutors stated they killed Guardado, who was a fellow pupil on the Homestead Job Corps, a federally run residential faculty for at-risk youth.
Prosecutors stated Strickland’s boyfriend, Kaheem Arbelo, swung the blows that killed Guardado, and in 2017 the state lawyer’s workplace determined to hunt the loss of life penalty for him however not the opposite 4 defendants.
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Police stated Strickland and Arbelo had intercourse within the woods after the boy’s physique was buried. And witnesses instructed detectives that Strickland “complained that she had missed the first series of machete strikes because she had walked away for a few minutes to urinate in the woods,” in response to an arrest report.
Authorities consider the teenager was killed over a debt owed to Arbelo, who was a suspected drug vendor.
Fellow college students Jonathan Lucas, Christian Colon, and Joseph Michael Cabrera have been additionally charged in Jose’s loss of life, information present.
Arbelo, Lucas and Colon confessed after they have been detained in August 2015, police stated.
Lucas and Cabrera pleaded responsible to a cost of conspiracy to commit homicide in 2020. Lucas was sentenced to 5 years in jail and 15 years’ probation. Cabrera acquired much less punishment, in response to the Herald.
Arbelo and Colon, who’ve each been detained since August 2015, are nonetheless awaiting trial.
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(© Copyright 2022 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
