7th suspect in Stamford double-stabbing caught in Maryland after months on run, police say
STAMFORD — “I killed him, dude,” Julio “Chimado” Chavez-Perez said in a voicemail in the wake of a double-stabbing on the city’s West Side, where police say seven assailants attacked two men with ”makeshift” spears, according to an arrest warrant.
Chavez-Perez was arraigned Tuesday at state Superior Court in Stamford on an attempted murder charge, among others, following his recent capture in Maryland. The 30-year-old had been on the run from police since at least March, according to his arrest warrant.
Chavez-Perez is the seventh person arrested in connection with the Nov. 5, 2023, attack on Rose Park Avenue. The incident left one person with a serious life-threatening injury, police said at the time, though the victim has since recovered.
Charges related to the attack are pending against Jostin Hernandez-Lopez, Angel Soto Alaniz, Jose “Casper” Garrido-Morales, Josue Solis, Carlos Lopez Monroy and Marvin Lemus-Padilla.
Chavez-Perez faces charges of attempted murder, first-degree assault, conspiracy to commit first-degree assault, first-degree reckless endangerment, conspiracy to commit first-degree reckless endangerment, second-degree threatening and conspiracy to commit second-degree threatening.
Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph Valdes, the prosecutor handling the cases, called the attack a “gang retaliation incident,” connected to a dispute between two gangs and two other Stamford stabbings from earlier in 2023 — one on Oct. 9 and another on Oct. 24, both at Lione Park,
Police said in Chavez-Perez’s warrant that the 30-year-old was identified by multiple witnesses as the suspect who had stabbed the individual who suffered life-threatening injuries.
“I killed him, dog,” Chavez-Perez said in a voicemail obtained by police, the warrant said. “I swear to you. … I have to get the f— out of here.”
After the stabbing, Chavez-Perez told his alleged accomplices “they were in it together and not to say anything to police and warned them not to talk about it and threatened that they would have an issue with him,” the warrant said. The 30-year-old also bragged about where he had stabbed the victim twice, saying “that he thought he killed [him/her],” according to the warrant.
Chavez-Perez and the others charged in connection with the attack allegedly all are “known as … members of a gang based out Stamford’s West Side” known as “Mara 18,” “18” and “Diez y Ocho.”
The victims in the case were affiliated with MS13, “an international crime gang,” according to the warrant.
The 7-on-2 stabbing was reported on Rose Park Avenue around 3:40 p.m. Nov. 5.
At the scene, police found a 20-year-old man who had been stabbed in the chest and a 30-year-old man who had been stabbed in his left shoulder and lower back, according to the warrant. The 20-year-old had wounds severe enough to require immediate surgery and was admitted to the hospital intensive care unit for a “multi-day hospital stay,” the warrant reads.
Surveillance footage from a nearby home captured someone “yelping loudly,” and the two men emerging from a walkway between two homes, according to the warrant. As the 20-year-old crossed the threshold of a wooden gate, the footage showed him “immediately engaged in fight by an assailant dressed in white pants,” the warrant states. The assault left the younger man lying face-down in the street motionless, with friends rushing back and forth apparently “trying to fend off the attackers,” the warrant states.
Footage from a nearby garage captured seven people getting out of a white work van on Rose Park Avenue, the warrant states, two of them each brandishing what was described as a “makeshift spear,” according to the warrant. One was armed with a knife, while two others held a black belt and a length of chain, the warrant states.
Other witnesses provided police with cellphone video that showed the group returning to the van after the assault and speeding off, it said.
Police were able to trace the van to its owner using license plate reader data, according to the warrant. The woman who owned the vehicle told investigators she’d agreed to lend it out to a man she identified as Garrido-Morales, who was friends with her brother and boyfriend. Police found the vehicle at the Garrido-Morales’ home; a search of the van didn’t turn up any evidence, though, according to the warrant.
One witness who identified Garrido-Morales and two others as being involved in the assault allegedly told police he “knows these three to regularly antagonize and fight random people,” the warrant said.
Another witness told police one of the attackers claimed the 20-year-old victim had “messed with the Mara 18,” apparently referring to a street gang, the warrant said.
The 30-year-old stabbing victim, a Bridgeport resident, told police he’d gone to hang out with the younger man that day. Later in the afternoon, the 20-year-old received a call he put on speakerphone. The older man told police the callers, some of whom he recognized by their voice, were insulting the younger man, saying they were “going to beat the (expletive) out of him,” the warrant stated.
The younger man told the callers he “wasn’t afraid of them,” the 30-year-old told police, and that they could come over to his house whenever. About 10 minutes after the call, the group called again and said they were outside, the warrant stated.
The 20-year-old man, followed by friends, went outside to meet them, but the friends went back in the house when they saw the group armed with “knives chains pipes,” the older man told police, according to the warrant. He told investigators the younger man was separated from the group and left outside.
“I went out quickly to help him and the bad guys were right next to the door waiting for us to come out,” the older man told police, according to the warrant.
The November incident was preceded by two earlier stabbing incidents, according to Valdes.
The first, on Oct. 9, involved five people “jumping” a 19-year-old and attacking him with “broken fence posts” and a BB gun, according Capt. Tom Scanlon, head of Stamford’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations.
The 19-year-old suffered several lacerations as a result of the attack, and 18-year-old Edson Vasquez Munos, then 17, was charged with several felony assault charges in connection to the attack.
The next incident happened on Oct. 24, when police responded to Lione Park where Stamford brothers Henry Morales-Cante and Marlon Morales-Cante are accused of stabbing a 17-year-old in the back and shooting an 18-year-old in the face with a BB gun.
Chavez-Perez was held in lieu of $750,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in court March 19.