A man who stabbed another man to death inside an Ocoee home over the weekend sent a text message to his landlord as he fled, telling her he had just killed someone, according to police.
“Hey dude yesterday a guy came into my room and he wanted to nail me so I killed him dude,” said the message, which police translated from Spanish.
Joe Luis Chavez, 23, was later apprehended at a bus station Sunday evening and arrested on charges of second-degree murder and grand theft, records show.
Chavez’s landlord told police she called him after receiving the alarming text. He told her that he would no longer be living at the house on Wurst Road and was moving to Michigan, she told police.
Officers arrived about 10 a.m. to find the victim, later identified as 40-year-old Rogelio Andrade Hernandez, dead on the floor of Chavez’s bedroom, wedged between the bed and the wall, records show.
Police caught up with Chavez at a Greyhound station on John Young Parkway.
He was taken to the Ocoee Police Department for an interview, in which he admitted killing Hernandez and fleeing in the dead man’s van, an affidavit said. According to the report, Chavez claimed he was sleeping in his room when he awoke to find Hernandez trying to remove his pants.
He said he feared Hernandez was trying to rape him so he stabbed Hernandez multiple times, the report said. Chavez said he had been drinking and using drugs, including cocaine, earlier in the evening with Hernandez and he “was not thinking” as the killing occurred.
“During the interview at no moment or time did Jose Luis Chavez seem remorseful, he appeared as if he was not bothered at all by what he did,” Ocoee police investigator Juan Munoz wrote in his report.
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Though he claimed it was in self-defense, Chavez said he had no plans to notify police about the killing, the report states.
Police said they found Hernandez’s van near Reba and Flewelling avenues, with the knife nearby.
Chavez remained in the Orange County Jail on Monday, where he was being held without bail.
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