Two men arrested in burned body case
Two Tennessee men are in jail on charges of murdering a man, dumping him in the Whitfield County, Ga., woods and setting parts of his body on fire.
Roberto Viera Aybar, 23, and Hector Ruiz, 29, killed the man on Jan. 9 or Jan. 10, according to a news release from Sheriff Scott Chitwood.
A 13-year-old boy found the body of the victim, Luis Antonio Lopez, in the woods off Ellis
Road in Whitfield County less than 24 hours later.
Investigators are still trying to figure out the motive for killing 26-year-old Lopez, and they also believe more people were involved in the crime. Members of the sheriff’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation have made several trips to Nashville and Murfreesboro to investigate the case because that’s where Lopez was from.
“Additional [arrests] are anticipated,” Chitwood said in the release.
Soon after investigators found the body in January, they identified Lopez. His parents had reported him missing from Nashville shortly before the killing, and examiners with the GBI crime lab later confirmed his identity, according to the release.
After developing information linking Aybar and Ruiz, Chitwood said, investigators received arrest warrants from a Whitfield County magistrate on Feb. 16. Members of the U.S. Marshals Service later tracked the men down. The news release does not say how they found Aybar or Ruiz.
Officers drove Aybar to the Whitfield County Jail on Monday. Ruiz remains at the Metro Nashville Jail but soon will join Aybar in Whitfield County.