Four Job Corps students hack boy, bury him alive

(This was a month ago, but the story deserves full telling.)

Four Florida students hacked a 17-year-old boy with a machete and buried him alive before two of the killers celebrated by having sex near the murder scene, police said.

Desiray Strickland, 18, was arrested Wednesday, becoming the fourth charged in the gruesome slaughter of Jose Amaya Guardado on June 28, Miami-Dade police said.

Kaheem Arbelo, 20, Jonathan Lucas, 18, and Christian Colon, 19, were arrested and confessed to the crime last week, police said.

The twisted friend group plotted for two weeks, even digging the grave and hiding a machete beforehand in a wooded area near the Homestead Job Corps campus, where all five students lived about 35 miles south of Miami, according to an arrest report obtained by the Miami Herald.

On June 28, the disturbed teens lured Guardado to the woods after the unsuspecting teen asked permission from the school to leave campus to buy food, police said.

Arbelo, Lucas and Colon then ambushed Guardado and Arbelo struck him repeatedly with the machete, police said.

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," according to the arrest report.

Outnumbered, Guardado tried to stop the murder, but the sick sadists kept going.

"The victim made one last attempt to fight off the attackers," a detective wrote, "at which time, (Arbelo) struck the victim with the machete several more times until the victim's face caved in."

The four teens then ordered Guardado into the shallow grave and buried him as he took his last breaths, police said. They burned their clothes and Guardado's belongings.

As Lucas and Colon headed back to campus, Strickland and Arbelo stayed behind to have sex, police said.

His body was discovered three days later by his brothers, who had desperately searched for him after he was reported missing.

They first saw two feet in a burned area and called police, who extricated the body.

The body was unrecognizible and decomposed," cousin Ana Morales wrote on a family fundraising page. "His brothers could not resist to see the body. They were crazy with grief hoping it was not Jose."

Investigators believe the school bullies slaughtered Guardado over a debt he owed to Arbelo, who is a suspected drug dealer on the Homestead campus. The pair were roommates, NBC Miami reported.

"Why would they do this?" a relative asked the station in Spanish.

The family said it wants the death penalty for their son's killers.

Arbelo, Lucas and Colon confessed on video to the killings, but Strickland was not so cooperative, police said.

She shoved and head-butted a detective before getting shackled in the interview room, police said.

Using screws from a nearby electrical outlet, Strickland tried to pick her handcuffs and then etched "MPD Go to Hell" on a table, according to the arrest report.

Arbelo, Strickland and Lucas have been charged with first-degree murder and Colon faces a second-degree murder and conspiracy charges, according to jail records. Arbelo and Lucas face charges of first degree conspiracy and evidence tampering.

Strickland also faces resisting an officer with violence, battery of an officer and criminal mischief.

They are being held without bond.

A fifth arrest is expected this week.

Guardado, the son of immigrants, sold ice cream on the weekends to help make ends meet.

He was a "peaceful young man and he was fun with his friends," Morales wrote. He was shy, which some people took as "antisocial."

"A crime is bad, but what Jose suffered was horrible," she wrote.

The Job Corps school and vocational program, funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, houses at-risk students between the ages of 16 and 24 at 125 campuses across the country.

"The safety and security of Job Corps students is our top priority," the school said in a statement. "Steps already have been taken to strengthen security at the Homestead center."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/florida-students-hack-boy-17-machete-bury-alive-article-1.2331701

Link at http://www.fark.com/

(So, what are the odds of other problems at Homestead and at the other 124 locations for “at-risk students? One of the accused is “a suspected drug dealer” at the Homestead campus. What are the odds Homestead officials knew?)