A Connecticut taxi driver whose body was recovered from a New York reservoir earlier this month was killed following a dispute with a passenger over a fare, officials said Monday.
“I unfortunately think this was a dispute that went terribly, terribly wrong,” Putnam County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Michael DiVeglio said, according to the NewsTimes.
Sheriff Brian Hess said Santos Vasquez Ramirez, 28, of Pawling, N.Y. was arrested Friday in the murder of Aurelio Zhunio Orbez, 66, of Danbury, Conn.. Police said surveillance footage, DNA evidence and assistance from other law enforcement agencies led to the arrest.
“This was a brutal and senseless act of violence against a hardworking man … who was serving his community. Mr. Orbez was a father of four, a resident of Danbury, and someone who did not deserve the fate he suffered,” Hess said.
Officials said Ramirez confessed to the slaying and admitted he’d been in Zhunio Orbez’s taxi in the past.
“He admitted to killing Mr. Orbez over a dispute over a taxi fare. He further stated that after the killing, he dragged him into the woods, into the reservoir off the Magnetic Mud road,” the sheriff said.
He was arraigned Saturday — the same day as the victim’s funeral — on second-degree murder and first-degree robbery charges.
Zhunio Orbez was last seen alive on Dec. 1 picking up a customer in a hoodie at the Metro-North Railroad’s Brewster station in New York. His black Toyota Sienna minivan was found abandoned in Westchester two days later.
His body was discovered on Dec. 7 by a fisherman in the Croton Falls Reservoir in Carmel, N.Y.
The suspect remains in custody and is due back in court on December 18.
