Suspect Arrested in NYC Gay Bar Homicides
"The New York Police Department said on Sunday that a man had been arrested and charged with murder in connection with a series of killings and robberies at Manhattan gay bars that has terrorized the city's L.G.B.T.Q. community and drawn attention to the use of drugs to incapacitate, rob and kill," reported the New York Times on Sunday.
Jacob Barroso, 30, of New Britain, Conn., was arrested on Saturday and charged with the murder of Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker who died of a drug overdose last April in what the medical examiner described as a "drug-facilitated theft."
Mr. Barroso was also charged with robbery, grand larceny, and identity theft, but he had not been arraigned as of Sunday night, the Manhattan district attorney's office said.
The Daily News wrote that Barroso, 30, is one of a half-dozen reputed gang members indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on March 23 for murder, robbery, grand larceny, and conspiracy in the killings of John Umberger and Julio Ramirez.
He's charged specifically with the murder of Ramirez, according to police. "Ramirez, a Brooklyn social worker, was found unconscious in the back seat of a taxi on the Lower East Side early on April 21, 2022, after he'd visited a gay nightspot, the Ritz Bar and Lounge on W. 46th St.
"Umberger, a Washington resident and political consultant, was found dead June 1 in an Upper East Side apartment where he had been staying. He died after visiting the Q, a gay nightclub in Hell's Kitchen," added the Daily News.
Last month, the city Medical Examiner deemed the deaths of Ramirez, 25, and Umberger, 33, homicides caused by "drug-facilitated thefts."
The Ramirez family did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday, wrote the New York Times. "Linda Clary, the mother of Mr. Umberger, said in an interview on Sunday that the case was 'moving in the right direction,' even though no one had yet been charged with her son's murder."
"I am very thankful that progress in the case is being made," she said. "I am relieved some of the suspects have been arrested, and I hope the final ones will be arrested too."
"Mr. Barroso is the third person to be arrested and charged in connection with the robberies in those cases, and he is the first to be charged with murder in either case," reported the New York Times.