Woman plans to plead guilty in gruesome machete murder of Homestead teen

When Desiray Strickland was accused of taking part in the gruesome machete murder of a teenage boy in Homestead in 2015, she insisted she was innocent.

“I did not kill that boy, I promise!” Strickland, then 19, screamed at a MiamiDade detective in a police interrogation video.

But Strickland, now 25, has decided to accept responsibility. On Wednesday, her defense attorney told a judge she plans to plead guilty to conspiracy to murder 17-year-old Jose Amaya Guardado, who was hacked to death with a machete and found buried in a shallow grave in the woods of Homestead.

The plea deal, which would send Strickland to prison for 15 years, would allow her to avoid a potential life sentence on the original charge of firstdegree murder.

“We were hoping to do [the plea deal] today, but some terms were changed and she wanted to discuss them with her mother and father,” Strickland’s attorney, Scott Sakin, said after Wednesday’s court hearing. “I expect it will go forward, but I’m not sure about when.”

The next hearing in the murder case is scheduled for late June. Strickland will remain jailed.

A grand jury delivered indictments for first-degree murder against Strickland and four others who allegedly planned the June 2015 murder of Guardado, a bespectacled teen who was a fellow student at the Homestead Job Corps, a federally run residential school for at-risk youth.

Strickland was the girlfriend of accused ringleader Kaheem Arbelo. He is alleged to have swung the blows that killed Guardado. In 2017, the state attorney’s office decided to seek the death penalty for Arbelo but not the other four defendants.

Witnesses told police that Strickland “complained that she had missed the first series of machete strikes because she had walked away for a few minutes to urinate in the woods,” according to her arrest report.

Strickland and Arbelo allegedly had sex in the woods after the group of Job Corps students buried the teen’s body. The killing is believed to have stemmed from a debt owed to Arbelo, a suspected drug dealer.

Fellow students Jonathan Lucas, Christian Colon and Joseph Michael Cabrera were also charged in Jose’s death. In 2020, Lucas and Cabrera pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. Lucas was sentenced to five years in prison and 15 years of probation. Cabrera received less punishment.

Arbelo and Colon, both in custody since August 2015, are awaiting trial.