WASHINGTON — A suspect in a June 2016 gang-related murder in a Gaithersburg park in Maryland has been arrested in Virginia, according to court records.
Jose Coreas-Ventura has been described by Montgomery County Police as an armed and dangerous man as they looked for him in connection to 18-year-old Cristian Villagran-Morales’ brutal death in the city’s Malcolm King Park.
He and four other suspects are accused of luring the man, who had come to the county from New Jersey to work as a landscaper, into the park and brutally killed him.
The group has ties to MS-13.
Two suspects, 16-year-old Juan Gutierrez Vasquez and 19-year-old Vanesa Alvarado, were arrested shortly after the crime was committed. The ‘ring leader,’ 28-year-old Oscar Delgado-Perez, was arrested at a Rockville motel in September. A fourth suspect, 18-year-old Josue Caudra-Quintanilla, was arrested in February.
Coreas-Ventura was found and arrested in Bedford County, Virginia, Tuesday, a day after the body of a 17-year-old boy from Lynchburg was found near a river in the county.
It is not clear if the two are connected.
Prosecutors have said previously that Alvarado texted Villagran-Morales offering to meet him in a park for sex. Instead, the man was stabbed 40 times.
Villagran-Morales had no gang ties, and police described him as a “hardworking guy.”
Coreas-Ventura appeared in a Bedford County courtroom Wednesday afternoon, where he waived extradition back to Maryland.
He was wanted on a first-degree murder charge.
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