The pair of Venezuelan illegal migrants who allegedly murdered Houston 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray lured the girl under a bridge, stripped off her clothes, and assaulted her for two hours before killing her, prosecutors said.
Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 22, and Franklin Pena, 26, were arrested by the Houston Police Department on Thursday after Jocelyn’s body was discovered in a shallow creek last Monday morning, Breitbart News reported.
Jocelyn’s mother, Alexis Nungaray, said her daughter snuck out of their apartment for unknown reasons on Sunday night, just hours before she was brutally assaulted.
Evidence presented to the court by Harris County prosecutors on Monday accused Pena and Martinez-Rangel of walking Jocelyn from a 7-Eleven convenience store near her home to a bridge on West Rankin Road, Click2Houston reported.
It was there that investigators allege that Martinez-Rangel grabbed the young girl’s neck, got on top of her, and covered her mouth with his hands.
The migrants then allegedly took off the pre-teen’s pants and undergarments so that she was naked from the waist down, and carried out their assault while her hands and feet were bound.
An autopsy report viewed by the judge listed Jocelyn’s cause of death as strangulation and noted that she had also suffered cuts on her backside.
After the murder, prosecutors claim that Pena and Martinez-Rangel attempted to scrape together money to leave town, and that the latter had shaved his beard to avoid being recognized.
Jocelyn’s body was discovered by a driver shortly after 6:00 a.m. the next morning, Click2Houston reported. The suspects had left her lower half nude.
Both men illegally entered the U.S.’s southern border into El Paso before being released into the country on their own recognizance by the Biden administration, Breitbart News reported.
They have since been charged with capital murder, the Houston Police Department said.
Ramos appeared in court Monday, where the judge set his bond at $10 million — “double what prosecutors requested, and ten times the sum sought by the defense,” according to the New York Post.
“Our immigration system is broken and if there was ever a case that reflected that, it’s this one,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said at a post-hearing press conference.
Alexis Nungaray also spoke alongside Ogg, saying that her daughter had a bright future before it was tragically taken from her.
“She was amazing, I still see her face in the back of my head everyday, all day. I keep getting little signs about her throughout the days and it’s been a very, very hard time for me and my family,” the grieving mother said.
