The horrific carjacking of a woman at a Winter Springs intersection and her brutal murder last April was a targeted killing emerging from an organized, yearslong statewide crime spree that included the murder of a tow-truck driver, home invasions and shipments of large amounts of cocaine into Central Florida from Puerto Rico, federal officials said Thursday.
“I know members of this community have that concern: If I’m at a stoplight at an intersection in broad daylight, am I going to get carjacked?” said U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg for the Middle District of Florida. “I just want people to know that in this specific case, it was not a random act that that victim was carjacked…. It is a story that began in 2020 and that played out four years later with her brutal murder.”
Handberg made the comments during a morning press conference at his Orlando office, revealing new details about the sprawling case but declining to answer some key questions, a day after one of the defendants involved in the carjacking and murder of Katherine Guerrero de Aguasvivas, 31, pleaded guilty in federal court to several weapons and drug charges. That defendant, Kevin Omar Ocasio Justiniano, is now scheduled to be sentenced April 15.
Justiniano is among nine people — including Guerrero de Aguasvivas’ husband, Miguel Aguasvivas Lizardo — who face more than a dozen federal charges, including drug trafficking, robbery, illegal use of firearms, carjacking, kidnapping causing death and arson for their roles connected to the larger drug operation.
Days after the Guerrero de Aguasvivas’ grisly killing, Jordanish Torres Garcia, Giovany Crespo Hernandez and Dereck Rodriguez Bonilla, along with Justiniano, were arrested in connection to the crime.
Then last week, a new indictment named Anneliz Colon de Jesus, Sonic Torres and Cesar Silva Fernandez as also being connected to the larger operation.
Guerrero de Aguasvivas was carjacked on April 11 after she picked up $170,000 from Crespo Hernandez’ Casselberry home, according to court records. Investigators said she was carjacked and robbed of the money as she drove away from the home, taken to a vacant construction site near St. Cloud, shot multiple times and set on fire inside her SUV.
During the carjacking, Torres Garcia walked to her car, pointed an AR-15 rifle at Guerrero de Aguasvivas as she waited at the intersection, then climbed into the backseat while Justiniano followed in a green Acura, investigators said.
Court records show that she was working as a courier for the group and would often drive from South Florida to Central Florida to pick up and deliver cash bundles from drug sales. Handberg, however, offered few details as to why she was targeted.
“Why on that particular occasion did they decide to follow through and murder her? That is something that will have to come out as the case proceeds in federal court,” he said. “We see the efforts to hide who she was by lighting her on fire and lighting the car on fire. Based on my experience, it certainly seems like they didn’t want a witness to the robbery they had just committed.”
“Violence and drug trafficking go hand in hand,” he said.
A day earlier on April 10, the same green Acura sedan and the same gun used in Guerrero de Aguasvivas’ killing were used in the brutal murder of Juan Luis Cintron, a tow truck driver shot nearly a hundred times as part of a robbery in a Taft neighborhood, investigators said.
Handberg said federal authorities have evidence Torres Garcia shot both victims, and each was not “a random act.” But he offered few other details, including whether Cintron was connected to the group.
The drug trafficking began in 2020 when Torres Garcia, Crespo Hernandez and his girlfriend, Monicsabel Romero Soto, brought shipments of cocaine — as much as 5 kilograms at a time — into Central Florida from South Florida and Puerto Rico. Romero Soto faces federal drug trafficking and weapons charges.
In mid- 2022, Justiniano bought law enforcement tactical gear from a Central Florida store for group members to disguise themselves as law enforcement officers and commit home invasion robberies, investigators said. The robberies continued through last February.
The defendants also trafficked drugs throughout the state and Puerto Rico beginning in 2021, when packages containing a total of 27 kilograms of cocaine came into Orlando from the island, said Deanne Reuter, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Miami.
The killing of Guerrero de Aguasvivas opened the door to the criminal organization, Handberg said.
“These organizations are like spiderwebs,” he said. “I don’t expect this to be the end of the story.”