MIAMI – After he was arrested in Miami Beach for murders in Oklahoma, a Chinese man told a judge in Miami-Dade County court that he feared the members of an organized crime organization.
Chen Wu, also known as Wu Chen, communicated with Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Mindy S. Glazer on Wednesday with the help of an interpreter and begged her to stop his extradition to Oklahoma.
“I want to stay here whatever how long I have to stay in jail I don’t care. But if I go back to Oklahoma I’ll be killed in the prison or jail ... I’m afraid I will be killed because these people are mafiosos,” Wu told Glazer, according to Hailin Huang, the court’s Mandarin-to-English interpreter.
Wu, 45, was driving a car with a tag that investigators included in a shared database, so when a tag reader in Miami Beach detected his presence on Alton Road, police officers tracked the car to a parking lot along Collins Avenue and waited to arrest him on Tuesday, according to The Miami Beach Police Department.
A judge in Oklahoma issued a warrant for Wu’s arrest on Monday, Glazer told Wu in Miami-Dade County court. The four execution-style murders at a marijuana farm were more than 1,600 miles away from Miami Beach.
In Oklahoma, Kingfisher County Sheriff’s Office deputies and Hennessey Fire Rescue personnel responded on Sunday afternoon to a 10-acre farm near Hennessey, a town that is about a 90-minute drive to Oklahoma City, and found three men and a woman dead, according to The All About Hennessey Post.
“There was a fourth male that was injured and he was transported to the hospital by helicopter,” Brook Arbeitman, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, told reporters.
All of the victims were Chinese and knew each other, according to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. Porsha Riley, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, told reporters the farm was licensed.
Oklahoma voters chose to legalize medical marijuana four years ago. Mark Woodward, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, told Oklahoma City’s ABC News affiliate that crime rings have managed to get state licenses.
“That piece of paper is nothing more than a front for them to continue to do what these organizations have been doing and that’s growing black market marijuana and laundering money worldwide,” Woodward said later adding, “These groups can be very, very violent.”
Location of the farm
Location of the arrest
ABC News and The Associated Press contributed to this report.