Florida’s machete murder mastermind has pleaded not-guilty in the premeditated attack on a fellow JobCorps student this month.
Kaheem Arbelo, 20, and his three confessed accomplices are accused of luring 17-year-old Jose Amaya Guardado into a remote area near the residential vocational campus they all attended, and brutally hacking him to death.
Arbelo, as well as Jonathan Lucas, Christian Colon, and Desiray Strickland -- all 18 and 19 years of age -- have been charged with the homicide, in a coldblooded murder conspiracy that was at least two weeks in the making.
Post mortem analysis revealed the El Salvadoran-born teenager they murderously mobbed was still alive, although barely, when the group then buried him, had sex to celebrate the heinous crime, and left him for dead.
Before dying in his shallow grave, Guardado had sustained such severe injuries in the vicious machete attack that his face and skull “collapsed.”
Prosecutors describe the suspects as known “bullies” who collectively terrorized the student body at the Homestead JobCorps school which is operated by the U.S. Department of Labor and aids youngsters in obtaining their high school diplomas, work skills and gainful employment.
Homestead is one of over 120 such government-run facilities in the United States that train young people between the ages of 16 and 24 for better lives in America.
“I brought my son from El Salvador because they were killing people,” the victim’s devastated mother told reporters this week via an interpreter. "I never imagined they would do something like that to him here.”
