In the late hours of a Friday in Frankfort, Kentucky, a 54-year-old man, Adan Juarez Vicente, found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. A native of Matamoros Tamaulipas, Mexico, Vicente was known to many of his friends as Alan. On the evening of May 26, 2017, he was helping out at the Marathon gas station on Holmes Street. What began as a seemingly ordinary night took a tragic turn when two men, armed with handguns, approached him in what authorities would later describe as an
attempted robbery. During the confrontation, Adan Juarez Vicente was shot and killed, his life brought to an abrupt and violent end.
The Frankfort Police Department quickly launched an investigation into the homicide. Their efforts led them to two local residents, 22-year-old James Andrew Johnson Jr. and 24-year-old Emmanuel Gunpay Bush. In the early morning hours of Sunday, May 29, 2017, officers arrested both men without incident at a residence in Frankfort. They were subsequently charged with the murder of Adan Juarez Vicente.
As the investigation unfolded, authorities linked Johnson and Bush to other recent crimes in the area. They were also charged with two counts of robbery for incidents that had occurred earlier in the month at Arandas Mexican Restaurant and a Circle K gas station. A third individual, 21-year-old Jarqueze Omar-Lumot Bunton, also from Frankfort, was implicated in the robberies of the restaurant and the Circle K. At the time of his charging, Bunton was already incarcerated at the Franklin County Regional Jail on unrelated domestic violence and parole violation charges.
