Homestead woman’s carjacking death unveils tangled web of drugs and murder beyond Florida
For close to three weeks, the circumstances surrounding the fatal ambush of a Homestead woman by a masked gunman at an intersection in a Central Florida neighborhood of manicured lawns and pool homes has remained shrouded in mystery.
The series of events — and its twisting threads — have evolved almost as if penned in a crime novel, captivating sleuths and true crime connoisseurs around the world. It all began with cellphone footage taken on April 11 by a motorist who witnessed the attack while stopped at a red light at East Lake Drive and Tuskawilla Road in Seminole County.
READ MORE: Uncovering a drug nexus? look at the probe into Homestead woman’s deadly carjacking
A man, covered from head to toe in black, was caught on video pointing a semiautomatic rifle at the driver’s side door of 31-year-old Katherine Altagracia Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ white Dodge Durango. The hijacker then opened the rear driver’s side door and hopped into the SUV.
The Durango made a U-turn as soon as the light turned green. Hours later, Guerrero De Aguasvivas would be found shot to death inside her torched Durango at a Osceola County construction site.
Many questions emerged; few answers followed.
Why was Guerrero De Aguasvivas in Central Florida? Was the ambush targeted or random? Was the Homestead woman involved in something sinister?
From the start of the investigation, Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma turned to the media, divulging details on leads and offering thorough updates in frequent news conferences. One of the first major breaks: a green 2002 Acura, the only such make and model in that color in Florida.
A deluge of news ensued, unspooling a multi-threaded, coordinated attack on a seemingly unsuspecting Homestead woman.
An Orange County Sheriff’s Office deputy was arrested, agents discovered bricks of cocaine stuffed in a lamp shipped from Puerto Rico to Central Florida and three men considered to be persons of interest were detained, all on drug-related charges. The sprawling investigation into Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ death now spans several counties and includes federal agents and detectives from multiple sheriff’s offices.
The probe, though nowhere near final, has uncovered a winding trail of drugs, money and murder linked to Florida and Puerto Rico — and a cast of characters previously known to law enforcement in different capacities.
“Clearly, there’s a drugs and money nexus here,” Lemma said.
An enigmatic victim
In life, Guerrero De Aguasvivas flashed a smile when surrounded by loved ones, celebrating birthdays and enjoying days out on the beach, according to video montages posted on her social media accounts.
Yet she remains an elusive character in her own story. Not much is known about Guerrero De Aguasvivas — or how she’s tied to the alleged criminal underworld. According to Lemma, the Homestead woman left her native Dominican Republic five years ago. She was married to Miguel Angel Aguasvivas, who runs Miguelito Barber Shop in Florida City.
Miami Herald reporters went to the barber shop, but a man sitting outside said Aguasvivas wasn’t there. The business, according to state records, is registered under the name of Aguasvivas’ mother.
For at least some time, Aguasvivas’ wife, the woman in the Durango, worked at the Dominican Beauty Room Salon and Spa in Florida City. She became a licensed nail tech in 2022. A sign on the outside of the salon, in a small strip mall on West Palm Drive, stated: “No News Reporter At Job Site. Please Respect Our Privacy.”
As reporters stood reading the sign, a woman opened the door and demanded they leave. The salon is owned by the family of Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ sister-in-law.
Reporters also went to an apartment on Southwest 142nd Avenue linked to Guerrero De Aguasvivas, but no one answered the door. The balcony was still adorned with strings of Christmas lights, and there was a Christmas-themed mat outside the front door. At least two cameras were installed in front of the unit.
A neighbor said he hasn’t seen anyone come and go from the third-story apartment in months.
The secrecy surrounding Guerrero De Aguasvivas is compounded by the silence of loved ones. Friends and family have posted tributes for her on their social media pages, though none have responded to the Miami Herald’s requests for comments.
The Homestead woman’s online activity offers a rare but limited glimpse into facets of her life. Guerrero De Aguasvivas, according to her Facebook, possibly has two children, including a 5-year-old daughter. She has not publicly posted photos of her and Aguasvivas — aside from a few on an X account that hasn’t been active for a decade — despite the couple’s relationship dating back to at least 2013.
In several posts, she detailed how much she appreciated being a mother.
“I have done something good in this life to deserve having a daughter like you,” she said in Spanish on Facebook. “...I love you with all my heart, my soul, with the smallest cell that can exist inside of me. Only you have awakened in me feelings and emotions that I didn’t know existed.”
The end? ‘Far from it’
As detectives have pieced together the final moments of Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ life, the aftermath of the brutal slaying has been marked by odd twists and conflicting narratives.
One of the first peculiar revelations: She never called 911, despite having a phone on her in the car. According to Sheriff Lemma, Guerrero De Aguasvivas instead opted to call her husband when she noticed that a car was tailing her.
“Don’t stop, don’t stop, anywhere,” he advised her.
Aguasvivas also later told investigators that his wife was traveling to Central Florida to visit relatives. Family in the area, however, said they weren’t expecting a visit. From the jump, Lemma told reporters he was “skeptical” of Aguasvivas’ cooperation.
But answers about why Guerrero De Aguasvivas was in Central Florida followed. Her brother, Luis Fernando Abreu, said he learned she was in the area to “deliver money and other stuff for a friend,” after doing his own digging, Lemma said.
Through an iCloud account, Abreu contacted Giovany Joel Crespo Hernandez, who appears to be one of the last people Guerrero De Aguasvivas spoke to as she was driving on I-4 around downtown Orlando.
Abreu called the number through FaceTime, screenshotted the man’s image and sent it to Seminole County detectives. Investigators ran that photo through a police database, and it almost 100% matched a mugshot taken of 27-year-old Crespo Hernandez during a 2019 arrest in Orange County, Orlando’s home county.
Lemma’s latest theory about the reason for Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ drive from Homestead is that she was meeting with Crespo Hernandez, who has since been arrested on state drug trafficking charges. The GPS route she was taking indicates that she was headed to his home, less than three miles from where she was carjacked.
Though not directly associated with Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ carjacking, Crespo Hernandez’s live-in girlfriend Monicsabel Romero Soto, 28, is facing federal cocaine charges after allegedly picking up a package with three bricks of cocaine tucked inside a lamp.
READ MORE: Who’s linked to the case of a Homestead woman fatally carjacked in a coordinated ambush?
The green Acura connected to Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ fatal kidnapping is connected to the shooting death of tow truck driver Juan Luis Cintron Garcia, 39, just a day before in Orange County. At both murder scenes, dozens of spent 10-mm bullets were found.
The green Acura, police say, was towed by Cintron Garcia from an Orange County apartment complex on March 11.
Police traced the rare car back to its owner, 28-year-old Jordanish Torres-Garcia, who’s accused of being the masked carjacker. Kevin Omar Ocasio-Justiniano, 28, is suspected of being behind the wheel of the Acura during the ambush.
The complex web of murder, drugs and money is why federal agencies, including the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, are taking over the probe.
“The arrest of these four individuals does not mark the end of this investigation,” Roger Handberg, United States Attorney for the Middle District of Florida, told reporters during a recent briefing. “Far from it.”
Lengthy history with the feds
The question of who was behind the carjacking is one of the few that no longer lingers. Investigators say the masked man was Torres-Garcia — and that he outright confessed, according to a complaint.
But Torres-Garcia spun a bizarre yarn when talking to FBI agents. He claimed that half an hour before the kidnapping, he met with someone near the area of Lake Drive in Seminole County who gave him an AR-15 rifle and $1,500 to deliver Guerrero De Aguasvivas to “another individual,” the complaint says.
READ MORE: Man admits he was paid to kidnap Homestead woman in Central Florida, FBI says
That person wasn’t named in the document, though it’s unclear if Torres-Garcia provided a name.
The carjacking investigation isn’t his first run-in with federal agents.
In 2015, Puerto Rican drug unit detectives found Torres-Garcia in a San Juan apartment with two pistols, a rifle, dozens of rounds of ammunition and apparel with police branding. He pleaded guilty to a federal gun charge in 2016 and was sentenced to three years in prison followed by three years of probation.
At the time of the kidnapping, Torres-Garcia was still on probation. He was accused of violating his probation twice: once in 2019 for not reporting to a halfway house after his release from federal prison in Central Florida, and again, in 2022, after he was arrested by Orlando police for alleged stalking.
Torres-Garcia’s ex and the mother of his child told police he spammed her with calls and fired a gun into her backyard when she didn’t respond, according to court records. The state case was dismissed, though his federal probation was extended until 2025.
A transcript from Torres-Garcia’s 2016 sentencing sheds more light into his past. The then-21-year-old was a troubled youth, shuffling in and out of juvenile institutions since the age of 16. His defense attorney argued that some of his criminal history — which included a burglary charge and an assault conviction for hitting another inmate — was a “product of his immaturity.”
“Most… of his life he’s been under incarceration,” the attorney said, according to the transcript. “He has had no opportunity to be in a community and to develop as a mature adult.”
When weighing Torres-Garcia’s possible sentence, the judge considered how he obtained a GED, underwent mental health treatment and took a few nursing classes at John Dewey University in Puerto Rico. He asked prosecutors if they had any evidence of Torres-Garcia’s involvement in carjackings, robberies, murders or drug offenses before requesting that he address the court.
Torres-Garcia, seemingly expressing remorse, said he “ignorantly” had guns on him “out of anger because I had lost a relative.”
“I’m repentant of the things that I have done and I have learned many things in the time that I have been detained and I don’t want to get into any more trouble,” he said, according to the transcript.
A gang affiliation?
While law-enforcement authorities have alluded to the carjacking being associated with a drug trafficking network, there have been no established connections to gangs or organized crime groups — until agents narrowed in on Ocasio-Justiniano.
Ocasio-Justiniano, who also goes by “Kevo,” is a known drug dealer and member of the 6’s gang in Orlando, according to a complaint filed in federal court. It remains unclear how the accused getaway driver came to the attention of agents during the carjacking probe.
He was picked up in Puerto Rico, where he’s being held on an unrelated federal automatic weapons possession and drug trafficking warrant.
According to the complaint, detectives witnessed Ocasio-Justiniano driving off in a teal Acura MDX from a Central Florida home that was being staked out as a target in a 2022 DEA investigation. Some time later, he met with a street-level drug dealer, who showed agents dozens of bags of cocaine and fentanyl as well as “hot shot hits,” a mix of cocaine and fentanyl, given to him by Ocasio-Justiniano.
Ocasio-Justiniano was also surveilled at a notorious stash house in the Orlando area. Investigators detained him, the filing says, and found bags of cocaine and fentanyl identical to the drugs sold by the 6’s. A .40 caliber Glock with an “auto sear,” which makes the firearm a fully automatic machine gun, was spotted, tucked away inside a car.
When asked about the drugs, Ocasio-Justiniano said he hangs around people who use them, the document states. He initially denied knowing about the gun, though he later admitted to using it.
Ocasio-Justiniano has been on police’s radar in the past, too, court records show.
He was arrested in August 2022 on a slew of charges that include burglary, assault and false imprisonment, after his ex accused him of breaking into her home, slapping her and pointing a gun at several people. The couple had broken up, and Ocasio-Justiniano had moved out.
The ex-girlfriend said he told her that she “better move because he will always be around and he will make her life a living hell.” The case was dismissed after one of the victims signed a sworn statement declining prosecution.
In March that same year, Ocasio-Justiniano was charged with battery, disorderly conduct and resisting an officer after allegedly beating two men in the head with a bottle in the VIP section of an Orlando club. Police say Ocasio-Justiniano became irate after the men, regulars at the club, unknowingly crossed over to his section.
Ocasio-Justiniano entered a no contest plea in January 2023, records show. He was found guilty and was ordered to complete three years of probation.
His only drug-related charge was in 2020, after police pulled him over in a 2004 black Acura and discovered that he had four oxycodone pills and marijuana on him. Ocasio-Justiniano entered a plea and was released with time served after spending 59 days in jail.
Cocaine bricks, 2 Glocks and $13K in cash
As the case evolved, it quickly became apparent that there’s more to the story — and that it stems beyond Central Florida. Many of the people associated with Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ fate have links to Puerto Rico.
However, Crespo Hernandez is the only person of interest with established ties to South Florida.
Crespo Hernandez, according to a complaint, was the target of a 2020 Homeland Security probe in the Miami area that led to agents seizing more than $300,000. He’s also a known member of a drug trafficking organization and a person of interest in “a series of home invasions and homicide investigations.”
READ MORE: Arrests made in investigation into Homestead woman’s deadly carjacking
The name of the trafficking organization wasn’t included in the document. There are no public court records related to the 2020 federal inquiry, and it’s unclear why Crespo Hernandez wasn’t charged.
When detectives searched his Seminole County home in March, they located fentanyl, more than $13,000 in cash, two Glock firearms, multiple cellphones and expensive jewelry, the filing states. A Toyota in the driveway had a “trap” space within the car, a ploy used by traffickers to hide drugs.
Crespo Hernandez is being held without bond on state fentanyl trafficking and marijuana with intent to sell charges. He’s currently not facing charges in connection to Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ carjacking.
His live-in girlfriend, Romero Soto, was arrested by federal agents in April after they say she took delivery of three bricks of cocaine — worth $60,000 — that were found in a lamp in a package sent from Puerto Rico to a St. Cloud home in Osceola County. She, holding her 3-month old daughter on her hip, had picked up the lamp and was stopped by federal agents.
READ MORE: Bricks of cocaine found in lamp offer clue into a Homestead woman’s deadly carjacking
A Homeland Security agent testified in court that there was a thriving drug enterprise at the couple’s home — and that packages had been delivered to the St. Cloud address under names associated with Romero Soto since 2021.
A judge ordered Romero Soto, who moved to Central Florida from Puerto Rico in 2018, released from detention last week because she wasn’t a flight risk — despite evidence of “a substantial, long-running criminal enterprise,” the judge noted at her hearing.
Attorney Susan Malove argued that Romero Soto “is very concerned” about her children, ages 3 months and 10, and will comply with court orders to regain custody of them. The children are under the supervision of the Florida Department of Children and Families.
Deputy is first domino to fall
In a strange twist, one of the first clues in the puzzling deadly carjacking was the arrest of Orange County Deputy Francisco Estrella Chicon, who’s accused of illegally accessing the personal and professional profile information of the lead Seminole County detective on the case.
Using a bogus name, Estrella Chicon called the lead investigator and said he was a detective in Orange County — and a cousin of Guerrero De Aguasvivas, according to an arrest report. He said he was calling because he was concerned about his cousin and asked how the case was progressing.
The Seminole County detective told Estrella Chicon she couldn’t discuss the case with him, but also asked if he knew why Guerrero De Aguasvivas was in the area, the report says. He responded that he didn’t know as he wasn’t in regular contact with her.
About five minutes after getting off the phone, Estrella Chicon sent a recording of that conversation on WhatsApp to the Homestead woman’s husband, according to court documents. Estrella Chicon’s wife is Aguasvivas’ childhood friend.
Estrella Chicon was hired in September 2022. He has been relieved of all law enforcement duties without pay while the criminal case is under way.
“These are very serious criminal allegations. It is completely unacceptable for any law enforcement officer to misuse the power and authority of their job,” Sheriff John Mina said. “At the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, we hold our deputies to the highest ethical standards, and we will not tolerate anyone breaking the law within our ranks.”
Sitting beside his attorney in a suit and tie, Estrella Chicon told reporters that he answered a call from Abreu — Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ brother — and felt compelled to help him.
“Somehow they’ve implicated myself with all these heinous crimes,” Estrella Chicon said. “...I just want to get my life back.”
