Remembering Our Dead

TDoR 2020 / 2020 / April / 22 / Serena Angelique Velázquez

Serena Angelique Velázquez

Age 32

22 Apr 2020
Humacao, Puerto Rico (USA)
Murdered

TDoR list ref: tgeu/22-Apr-2020/Serena Angelique Velázquez Ramos

The charred bodies of Serena Angelique Velázquez and Layla Peláez were found inside a burned out car on the PR-927 highway in Humacao in the early hours of Wednesday 22nd April.

The burned vehicle belonged to the mother of one of the victims. Both were living in New York but were visiting Puerto Rico so that Layla could change her driver’s license to be identified as a woman - as Serena had done a few months earlier.

Two young men were arrested for the murder of two transsexual women on April 22 in a 2020 Hyundai Elantra vehicle, under a bridge on the PR-927 highway in the Mambiche Prieto neighborhood of Humacao.

The motive for the hate crime could be configured in this case, said the director of the Criminal Investigation Corps (CIC) of Humacao, Captain Teddy Morales. "The angle of hatred is present because it was revenge," said the captain, who revealed that one of the arrested confessed the facts.

The detainees are 19 and 22 years old and have no criminal record. The individuals accepted that they were the ones who appeared in a video with the victims shared hours before the tragic events and that they bought marijuana.

Serena Angelique Velázquez Ramos, 32, was from Queens, New York, was on vacation on the island and would travel back to her home at the end of the month and Layla Peláez Sánchez, 21, had been staying in the Texas neighborhood for two months. from Las Piedras.

Serena, una de las dos mujeres trans que fue brutalmente asesinada en Humacao, tenía su canal de YouTube.

Este es un pedazo de uno de sus vídeos —en el que habla del amor propio.#JusticiaParaSerena pic.twitter.com/ZK8SnsZ2Hy
— Pedro Julio Serrano (@PedroJulio) April 25, 2020