Manuel Galindo Oquendo, a 32-year-old Puerto Rican male, was found dead on March 12, 2015, in a rural area near the Manatee-Polk county line in Florida. His body was discovered facedown on a dead-end dirt road, showing signs of trauma that led to a homicide investigation. Oquendo, who lived in an RV park in Mulberry, had recently left his job at Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. due to a leg injury and walked with a cane because of a vein disease resulting from a 2011 skateboarding accident in Puerto Rico.
The investigation revealed that three teenagers from Mulberry planned to rob and kill Oquendo. On March 11, 2015, Alex Kinchen, 16, and Odilon Vela-Mendez Jr., 19, devised a plan to rob and murder Oquendo. They were joined by Kayla Jordan, 19, who was charged as an accessory to murder. According to the investigation, Oquendo was given what was believed to be Xanax to make him pass out in the front passenger seat of his car. Once he was unconscious, one of the teens shot him in the head. There were conflicting statements about who pulled the trigger, but both Kinchen and Vela-Mendez were charged with first-degree murder.
After the shooting, the teens drove Oquendo's car into a creek near Mulberry, where it was later found partially submerged. The investigation also uncovered that Oquendo had been seen loading his personal belongings into his vehicle on March 10, 2015, shortly before his death. His mother, Daisy Galindovega, who was visiting from Puerto Rico, informed detectives that her son was handicapped and required a cane to walk, raising suspicions when no cane was found with his body. The case highlighted the brutal nature of the crime and the involvement of young individuals in such a heinous act.
