Baltimore District Judge Nancy B. Shuger ordered yesterday that Espinoza, 22, and Adan E. Canela, 17, continue to be held without bail at the city’s Central Booking and Intake Center. They were charged last week in the deaths of three of their relatives — ages 9 and 10 — as the children arrived home from elementary school on Thursday.
Before, during and after yesterday’s bail review hearing, attorneys for both suspects questioned a statement that police say Espinoza made hours after his arrest.
According to police, Espinoza — speaking through a translator early Friday morning — said he had dropped Canela on Thursday afternoon at the Park Heights Avenue apartment complex where the three children were killed. Espinoza also said that Canela emerged shirtless from the apartment through a back window 40 minutes later, according to police accounts.
“Our investigation has led us to believe that there is the possibility the statement had some problems in translation,” said Canela’s attorney, James Rhodes.
He declined to say why he has become suspicious of the statement, but said, “It’s always an issue when translators are involved.”
He also said different dialects of Spanish might have confused a translation.
The state medical examiner’s office has said that 9-year-old Ricardo Solis Quezada Jr. and his 10-year-old cousin, Alexis Espejo Quezada, died of asphyxia, cutting and blunt-force trauma to the head. Ricardo’s 9-year-old sister, Lucero Solis Quezada, suffered cutting and blunt force trauma to the head. One of the children was decapitated and the other two were partially decapitated.
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In charging documents, police pointed to a bloody shirt and towel found at the suspects’ home, a 10-inch knife discovered outside the apartment’s back window and the statement made by Espinoza.
Police said they have not determined a motive. Espinoza is the children’s uncle and Canela is a cousin
In a city with more than 250 homicides a year, the killings have rattled the community. A candlelight vigil is scheduled for 7 p.m. today in the Northwest Baltimore apartment complex, in the 7000 block of Park Heights Ave., where the children were killed.
The children’s parents discovered them in the apartment about 5:20 p.m. Thursday
Shortly after the killings, a woman told police that she had seen two men acting suspiciously near the apartment earlier in the week and then recognized the same men at the scene, police said. She pointed them out of a group, police said.
Both Espinoza and Canela — who prosecutors said are illegal immigrants from Mexico — appeared individually before Shuger yesterday. During half-hour sessions, she explained through a translator the basics of the criminal justice system and then ordered that they remain jailed without bail.
“It goes without saying that the court has grave concerns for the safety of the public,” Shuger said.
Both hearings were conducted via closed-circuit television. Espinoza and Canela remained at Central Booking while Shuger presided over their hearing from the Borgerding District Court Building at 5800 Wabash Ave.
Both defendants wore standard-issue dark-green jail jumpsuits.
Espinoza’s lawyer, public defender Anne-Marie Gering, said the 22-year-old has lived in the United States for four years — the last two at his brother’s house on Bedford Road in western Baltimore County. She said the victims’ relatives don’t believe her client could have committed the crime.
Espinoza cocked his head slightly to his right throughout much of the proceedings, most of his hair pulled behind his ears.
Court officials said he has completed eight years of schooling. Gering said Espinoza has worked the past eight months at a local concrete company after stints working as a dishwasher and for a water tank company.
“He came here, as the rest of his family did, for a better life,” Gering said.
Canela followed his uncle and spoke more emphatically, also in Spanish.
Because the public defender’s office cannot represent two clients in a single case, Rhodes said, he has been asked to defend Canela on a pro-bono basis.
As Shuger read the charges against Canela, the 17-year-old gently shook his head, and then rolled his neck and his eyes.
Court officials said he has lived at the same house as Espinoza for two years and has an eighth-grade education.
Rhodes said he was not sure how long Canela had lived in the United States, but said most of his family lives in this country.
He said Canela formerly worked for his family’s mobile restaurant that sells food at construction sites. Police have said Canela worked as a butcher at a Baltimore slaughterhouse.
Rhodes said he knows little about the bloody shirt that police say they found at the suspects’ home, but he suggested possible causes, such as a shaving injury.
Rhodes said that when the case goes to trial he will be able to reconstruct Canela’s day.
“Mr. Canela denies any involvement in this matter,” Rhodes said.
Gering declined to speak after the hearings about Espinoza’s case. She successfully argued for an order to limit public officials’ discussion about the case.
“We are fearful right now that this is tainting our jury pool,” Gering said. Prosecutors did not challenge the motion.
Officials from the Mexican consulate were in the court building for yesterday’s hearing, attorneys said, but did not make any comment.
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Espinoza and Canela are tentatively scheduled for preliminary hearings June 28.
Russ Knocke, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, said both men admitted to federal agents yesterday that they were in the country illegally. Federal agents had intercepted Espinoza trying to cross the boarder into Arizona “a few times” during the summer of 2000, Knocke said.
Sun staff writer Stephanie Hanes contributed to this article.
<!– ART CREDITKARL MERTON FERRON : SUN STAFF
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTA Baltimore judge ordered that Policarpio Espinoza, 22, (left) and Adan E. Canela, 17, pictured last week, be held without bail.
CUTLINE TEXT–> <!– ART CREDITASSOCIATED PRESS
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTCanela's attorney, James Rhodes, speaks with reporters yesterday at the courthouse.
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