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WHEATON, Md. - Montgomery County
(web | news) Police have arrested three men for assaulting three people for their sexual orientation in Wheaton in October. Police say they are affiliated with the MS-13 gang and assaulted the victims in an apparent hate crime incident.
In the early morning on October 25, police say two women and a man were walking in the 2600 block of Weisman Road when a green vehicle parked nearby and three men got out of the vehicle. Police say the men threw rocks and bottles at the victims while yelling slurs about their sexual orientation at them.
One woman suffered life-threatening injuries when she was hit in the forehead by a rock. The other victims suffered minor injuries.
Police say one of the suspects showed a knife and another suspect displayed a stick or tire iron and threatened the victims before fleeing in the vehicle.
Three days later, police got information about a possible location of two suspects, who they found at a restaurant in Wheaton. Detectives used a new mobile fingerprint reader device to scan a person's fingerprint and match it with an arrest database -- called Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) -- to identify the suspects as 23-year-old Cinder Tobar-Campos and 30-year-old William Alexander Mendoza.
The third suspect, 24-year-old Felix Arevalo Cantarero, was found in November at a friend's house.
All three men have been arrested and charged with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit attempted murder, two counts of first-degree assault, second-degree assault, two counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree assault, conspiracy to commit second-degree assault, and three counts of committing a crime by assaulting the victim because of their sexual orientation.
The men are being held without bond at the Montgomery County Detention Center.
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