The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has indicted five men in connection with the drugging deaths of Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, and John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant. The men were targeted in a criminal operation to steal money, which involved plying them with dangerous drugs, leaving them incapacitated, and robbing them of their wallets and cellphones. The perpetrators then digitally siphoned money from their bank accounts and made purchases using their stolen credit cards.
The grand jury indictment unsealed on Tuesday charged Jayqwan Hamilton, Robert Demaio, Jacob Barroso, Andre Butts, and Shane Hoskins for robbery, conspiracy to commit robberies, identity theft, and grand larceny. Hamilton and Demaio were also charged with two counts of murder, while Barroso was charged with one murder count. A sixth defendant, Eddie Ashley, was separately indicted in connection with a single robbery incident.
According to the medical examiner’s office, both deaths were the result of “drug-facilitated thefts” and homicides, and both men had fentanyl, cocaine, and lidocaine in their systems when they died. During a news conference, NY Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said, “There were numerous victims in this pattern of crimes…many of the victims are from our LGBTQIA-plus community.” The neighborhood where the criminal enterprise focused attacks has a high concentration of LGBTQ+ residents.
Although the alleged crimes did not appear to specifically target gay men, the indictment reveals that many of the victims were from the LGBTQ+ community. The criminal operation involved approaching people leaving bars and nightclubs late at night, engaging them in conversation, offering them illicit and dangerous substances, using these substances as weapons to incapacitate their victims, and stealing their phones and credit cards in the subsequent hours and days after each incident.
Mayor Eric Adams recognized the heightened anxiety being felt by some of the city’s residents and said, “We want to send a message to our LGBT community that we understood the trauma that you experienced during this time,” adding that authorities would “investigate any potentiality of a hate-crime component to this.” Police say they have identified at least five killings, including Umberger and Ramirez, attributed to different groups that seemed to be operating independently.
Not all victims were gay men, but officials said that men were targeted for robberies at bars and nightclubs. In March 2022, Nurbu Sherpa, a 29-year-old chef, was found dead on the sidewalk after leaving a bar where he had been celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. At least one suspect has been charged in Sherpa’s killing and that of Ardijan Berisha, 26, who had passed out on a sidewalk with a friend in July after drinking at a bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Police urged anyone who had similar incidents to report them. Chief of Detectives James Essig said investigators had looked into 17 similar incidents between September 2021 and August 2022, where men were befriended in bars or nightclubs and offered narcotics or marijuana.