Deglis Antoni Jarquin, 24 years old, was arrested on Wednesday at his home in the Tamiami neighborhood of Miami-Dade, accused of kidnapping and brutally assaulting a woman who had accepted a ride home after finishing her shift at a café in Sweetwater, according to reports from local media in Miami.
Although the arrest did not occur until now, the incident took place in the early hours of July 16, around 12:30 a.m., when the victim —identified as Yajayda— finished her shift at the La Escalerita cafeteria.
Jarquin, a Nicaraguan citizen and regular customer of the establishment, offered to take her when the transportation service she had requested did not show up.
"I saw death that day": the victim's account
Yajayda broke her silence and described what she experienced that night in statements collected by Univision.
"I was requesting my Uber, the Uber never arrived, I was going to request it again, and he noticed that I was trying to get my Uber and offered to take me, and I didn't see that as a problem," the woman recounted.
According to the victim's account, during the drive on the Palmetto highway, Jarquin started making sexual advances and touching her inappropriately.
Instead of taking her to her destination, he would have driven to a dark area in the 16900 block of Northwest 37th Avenue in Miami Gardens, where he allegedly kissed her without her consent and demanded to have intimate relations.
“And he says to me: ‘Give me a kiss.’ I respond: ‘Why? It’s for the favor you’re doing me. If you want, I’ll pay for the ride.’ He grabs me by the neck. When I see that I can't breathe, I say: ‘Alright, I'm going to have intimacy with you,’ so that he lets me go,” Yajayda narrated to Telemundo 51.
The aggression and the escape
When the woman managed to get him to let go, she opened the vehicle door and tried to escape, falling to her knees on the pavement.
According to her testimony, Jarquin lunged at her immediately.
"He grabbed me by the hair, threw me against the pavement, and kept punching me with a closed fist. Honestly, I saw death that day.", the victim told Univision.
According to the police report, Jarquin also allegedly struck the back of the woman's head against the concrete several times and bit her on the stomach.
The victim was left unconscious on the road; when they regained consciousness, the accused had already fled in their car.
The next day, Yajayda returned to work with a swollen face covered in bruises. The owner of the business, Ariana Arria, called the police upon seeing her employee's condition and expressed her disbelief at the behavior of someone who was a regular customer at the establishment.
“We see faces, but we don’t know hearts. And we never imagined that there would be this kind of reaction. I am surprised, astonished,” Arria told Univision 23.
The investigation and the charges
The investigation by the Miami Gardens Police Department lasted nearly three months and included a review of surveillance cameras and a photo lineup in which Yajayda identified Jarquin about two weeks after the attack.
It also included the analysis of cellular antenna records that placed the suspect's phone on a route from the café to the location of the reported assault.
During the interrogation, Jarquin provided a different account: he claimed that both had agreed to engage in sexual relations in exchange for money and that it was the woman who struck him first.
However, the investigators gathered physical evidence, phone records, and other elements that supported the charges brought against him.
Jarquin faces a kidnapping charge—an offense that can be punished with life imprisonment in Florida, depending on the circumstances—as well as additional charges of physical assault.
According to reports regarding his arrest, he remains detained at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center without the possibility of bail and is also facing a immigration hold from federal immigration authorities.
"The truth is that I thought that was my day. I felt I was at my lowest, really, but I fought and fought, and thank God, here we are," Yajayda told Telemundo 51, and she left a message for other women: "Don’t get involved with anyone you don't know."
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