Suspects held in Virginia for Rensselaer County homicides
TROY >> Three people are being held in Virginia on murder charges related to a pair of dead bodies discovered within 25 hours earlier this week.
At a Thursday afternoon news conference, local, county and state investigators said Luis A. Monge Guevara, 20, of Clifton Park, Magdalono PerezCalixto, 28, of Latham, and Salomon Najera-Hernandez, 21, of Mexico, each face a second-degree murder charge in the death of Javier Gomez, 23, whose body was found Monday afternoon inside his apartment at 1 E. Glen Ave. Authorities said the three were arraigned in Virginia and are being held while investigators from the New York State Police, Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office and Troy Police Department make their way there to initiate legal proceedings to return them to New York state.
Gomez, a native of Mexico who had been living in the apartment for about five months, according to police, was found about 5 p.m. Monday by a roommate who was returning home from work, and an autopsy performed Tuesday determined the death was a homicide, though police are not releasing a specific cause.
Police have said they believe Gomez’s death is connected to the Tuesday afternoon discovery of another body by a person walking their dog along a tributary of the Quacken Kill near the intersection of Blue Factory Hill and South roads in Cropseyville. At the news conference, police confirmed that victim was Christian Gonzalez Hernandez, a roommate of Gomez who was initially being sought by city police in connection with Gomez’s death.
Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel Abelove said no charges have been filed yet in Hernandez’s death.
“Right now, [the charges in Gomez’s death] are the only accusatories filed so far,” he said, “and they’re being used to hold those people in the commonwealth of Virginia.”
Police are continuing to release few details of their investigations, including possible motives, though they admitted during the news conference there was a personal history between Gomez and the three suspects.
“Although the investigation is still unfolding, we are very confident that this was an incident between acquaintances,” said city Police Chief John Tedesco. “It was not a random event, and the community is not in any danger whatsoever.”
Rensselaer County Sheriff Pat Russo reiterated Tedesco’s statement, adding that the investigation is still active, with investigators not ruling out the possibility other people may be charged.
“We just wanted to put people at ease out there,” Russo said. “We still have a lot of work to do, interviewing witnesses, looking at evidence. We wanted to let people know that there is no threat to their safety.”
Gomez’s death is the first homicide of the year in Troy, with the last being the death of Noel Alkaramla, a 21-year-old woman who disappeared Nov. 21, 2015, and whose body was found in a suitcase in the Hudson River near the USS Slater in Albany on New Year’s Eve.