Four Job Corps students from Homestead, Fla., south of Miami, have now been charged with the gruesome murder of a 17-year-old who also went to the government-funded boarding school for at-risk youths, the Miami Herald reports.
Police say the students, Kaheem Arbelo, 20, (top left), Christian Colon, 19 (top right), Jonathan Lucas, 18 (bottom left) and Desiray Strickland, 18 (bottom right), hacked at Jose Amaya Guardado with a machete, caving in his face, then forced him into a shallow grave where they buried him alive.
According to an arrest report, Strickland at one point “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."
After the students allegedly burned their own clothes and Guardado's stuff in an attempt to cover up evidence, Colon and Lucas left the scene and Arbelo and Strickland stayed in the woods where they had sex, then went back to campus, police said.
Detectives told the Herald that Arbelo is a suspected drug dealer at the school. NBC Miami reported that detectives believe Guardado may have owed Arbelo money, and said the two were roommates at the school.
The students allegedly lured Guardado to the woods where a machete had been hidden and a grave had already been dug in preparation.
According to the New York Daily News, "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."
