Department of Justice provides updates on deadly Winter Springs carjacking
What we know:
ORLANDO, Fla. - Federal investigators have added several more people to an indictment surrounding a carjacking, kidnapping, and murder that happened in broad daylight.
The DOJ says these individuals were involved in years of drug deals and armed robberies, culminating in a double homicide in April of last year.
The new additions are Monicsabel Soto, Sonic Torres, Anneliz Colon de Jesus, and Cesar Silva Fernandez.
In total, the federal investigation is massive: 8 different defendants across 3 indictments – and those are only the numbers so far.
What they're saying:
"These organizations are like spider webs. And when I say that the investigation continues, it's because these individuals are linked to other people," said Roger Handberg, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida. "I don't expect this to be the end of the story."
The U.S Attorney and the DEA’s Special Agent in Charge emphasized, this case – the drug trafficking, the armed robberies, the homicides – has been years in the making.
"Our investigation has been and will continue to be thorough, methodical, comprehensive, meticulous and unrelenting," said Handberg.
The feds say the story starts in 2020.

Katherine Altagracia Guerrero De Aguasvivas was carjacked on April 11, 2024 in Winter Springs, Florida. A witness caught the incident on video. (Photo: Seminole County Sheriff's Office)
Investigators wiretapped phones, ran surveillance, even made some arrests over the years.
But none of that was enough to prevent the killing of Katherine Aguasvivas and Juan Garcia.
"I want to circle back to the question I asked previously about you guys being aware that these things were happening.," said FOX 35 News Reporter Marie Edinger to Handberg. "If the DEA and HSI had been looking into this drug trafficking ring and was aware of these robberies from years past, why were all of these people not incarcerated prior to this murder happening?"
"Sometimes it's a little easier when you look back at it with a little bit of hindsight," Handberg explained. "But what I can tell you is, there's a lot of choices they make every day that have stopped exactly the sort of thing you’re worried about. They have stopped somebody from being a driver of violent crime in the future. And what I can tell you is, we always try to do the best we can. We always reexamine what we do. And we're going to do the very best we can in this case, in every case, an investigation that we have."
Some of the people named in this indictment actually had been arrested before.
Crespo-Hernandez, the alleged ringleader, had been caught for drug crimes in South Florida in 2020, and linked to drugs in Tampa in 2021.
Kevin Justiniano, who pleaded guilty in this indictment Wednesday, had been picked up by investigators in 2022, caught with drugs and a machine gun.
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Sonic Torres-Garcia was caught drug trafficking in Georgia and took a plea deal in 2023, in which he admitted his crimes ranged into Florida.
His dad got a 2-year sentence after taking a guilty plea for transporting drugs between Fort Meyers and Orlando. The Bureau of Prisons says he’s no longer an inmate.
FOX 35 News reporter Marie Edinger asked the U.S. attorney about why the murder victims were targeted – particularly the tow truck driver who was killed. We haven’t gotten much information on that.
He says some of that, they just aren’t releasing right now.
But he did add, neither of those crimes were random. So he says the public doesn’t need to fear for their safety as it comes to this group.
The Source: The information in this article comes from the Department of Justice and reporting by FOX 35's Marie Edinger.
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