Nov 26 2009
Miami Adult Entertainment: Steve Rothaus
The crowd, many of them carrying candles as a breezy dusk settled over San Juan, were also demanding that authorities invoke a law for the first time covering crimes based on sexual orientation in the U.S. territory.
“We’re gay people, straight people, young people, old people. It is Puerto Rico that’s walking tonight,” Pedro Julio Serrano, a spokesman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said among the marchers gathered outside the island’s Department of Justice.
The mutilated body of 19-year-old college student Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado was discovered Nov. 13 along a road in the town of Cayey. He was a volunteer for organizations advocating HIV prevention and gay rights, and Serrano said there have been vigils for him in a dozen cities, including Los Angeles and New York.
Juan Martinez Matos, the 26-year-old suspect held in the case, allegedly met Lopez in an area known for prostitution, according to prosecutor Jose Bermudez Santos.