Burned body is believed to be a Homestead woman who was carjacked in Central Florida
A body found burned at an Osceola County construction site is believed to be a Homestead woman whose Thursday carjacking was caught on cellphone video.
Katherine Altagracia Guerrero De Aguasvias, if the investigators’ hypothesis is correct, died Thursday at the age of 31.
Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma said the gunshots and fire that led to people calling the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office occurred about 105 minutes after the carjacking at an intersection in unincorporated Seminole County.
“By the time the Osceola Sheriff’s Office arrived there, there was so much damage to the vehicle, you could not positively identify the vehicle,” Lemma said at a Friday news conference. “But they also discovered that one person was deceased in that vehicle. We believe that to be the vehicle and the decedent to be Katherine, but we have to positively confirm that through DNA examinations and dental records.
“But from all accounts of looking at the scene, it looks like the vehicle.”
Guerrero left her native Dominican Republic five years ago and became a U.S. citizen. With her husband, she owned a barbershop and a hair salon in Homestead.
“This was not a random act of violence,” Lemma said. “The perps knew who they were going after. Why they were going after her is part of an ongoing investigation.”
Lemma said when the driver carrying the suspected carjacker started hitting Guerrero’s car from the rear, Guerrero called her husband, but, so far, nobody has found a record of either calling a police agency. The sheriff’s office originally was told Guerrero drove up to visit relatives, but investigators found no relatives in Seminole County or the rest of the Orlando area.
Also not found, Lemma said, is any record of criminal activity by Guerrero or her husband.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Guerrero began driving north around noon Thursday and was north of Jupiter in Palm Beach County by 2 p.m. Lemma said her route took her through Orlando on Interstate 4 and into Seminole County, where she made an eightminute pit stop at a Shell station for gas.
“About a half-mile before East Lake (Drive) and Tuskawilla (Road), she started to notice that the green Acura was behind her and ramming into her back bumper,” Lemma said. “She called her husband. She told her husband she was being rammed and someone was following her. Her husband provided the advice, ‘Don’t stop, don’t stop, anywhere.’ ”
Guerrero stopped only when forced to do so by the stoplight at East Lake Drive and Tuskawilla
Road around 6 p.m. The Acura pulled up behind her. Someone with a gun and a “Halloween mask” got out of the Acura sedan and put a gun on Guerrero as a passenger in the car behind the Acura began shooting cellphone video.
The gunman then got into Guerrero’s Dodge Durango via the rear driver’s side door. The Durango and the Acura Uturned back west on East Lake Drive. But, then, Lemma said, they Uturned again back to the intersection and turned south onto Tuskawilla. They cut across lanes of traffic to get on State Road 417 South.
“There was a newer construction area that was set off in a little bit of a distance,” Lemma said, “but not so far away that eyewitnesses could not report hearing gunshots and, ultimately, the smoke of a vehicle set ablaze.”
Anyone with information on the Acura or anything about this can call the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office at 407665-6650 or Crimeline 800-423-8477 (TIPS).