MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A second arrest has been made in last year’s killing of a Doral man, and Miami-Dade police say they are still searching for one more suspect in the case.
According to police, Julio Cesar Hernandez-Montero, 28, was found in Panama City, Panama, and was extradited to the U.S. Thursday with assistance from the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations.
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Police said the victim, Jose Luis Sanchez Valera, 43, was found dead around 9:50 a.m., on Nov. 28, near the intersection of Northwest 28th Street and 37th Avenue.
He was found in the backseat of his 2018 Toyota 4Runner and police said his hands and feet were bound with tape.
A medical examiner reported he died of mechanical asphyxiation.
According to an arrest warrant, women lured the victim at about 10:20 p.m., on Nov. 27, to La Quinta Inn & Suites, at 3501 NW 42 Ave., where a group who was in a silver sedan kidnapped him, robbed him, burglarized his apartment in Doral and frightened a victim at his apartment before killing him.
The suspects stole a safe from a closet that belonged to Sanchez Valera, according to the warrant.
Sanchez Valera’s relatives used a phone app the next day to track his phone before finding him dead inside his blood-splattered SUV.
Sanchez Valera’s relatives told Telemundo in Spanish that he was a retired Venezuelan police officer, and that the group of thieves had worked to gain his trust over time, and it was clear that they had a plan to get the keys to the safe where he stored his savings in gold.
Detectives used social media, surveillance video, and cellphone data to identify Yurwin Salazar Maita, 23, a Venezuelan who was living in Pompano Beach, as a suspect in Sanchez Valera’s murder, according to an arrest warrant that a Miami-Dade judge issued on Dec. 22.
Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested Salazar Maita in January and transferred him to Miami-Dade where correctional officers booked him at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
Salazar Maita faces charges of first-degree murder, armed home invasion, carjacking and kidnapping. He is being held without bond and has a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold, inmate records show.
Hernandez-Montero is also being held without bond.
A woman named Yoleidy Del Carmen Ilarraza remains at large. Detectives identified both her and Hernandez Montero, who is her boyfriend, as acquaintances of Sanchez Valera and associates of Salazar Maita, according to the arrest warrant in Salazar Maita’s case.
The suspects allegedly have ties to Venezuela’s vicious Tren De Aragua gang.