The Lebanon County District Attorney’s Office announced on Friday that prosecutors will be seeking the death penalty against one of the people charged with killing two children and a teenager in Lebanon.
Alex Torres Santos, 22, was charged with three counts of homicide and related offenses after a shooting around 10 p.m. Tuesday that killed brothers Sebastian Perez-Salome, 9, and Jesus Perez-Salome, 8, as well as Joshua Lugo Perez, 19.
The three people who were killed lived in the same home on the 400 block of North Fifth Street, according to police. Neighbor Luis Cancel, 33, was hit by a stray bullet but is expected to recover.
The district attorney’s office announced a notice of aggravated circumstances was filed in Torres Santos’ case — a requirement if prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty.
James Fernandez-Reyes, 16, is also charged with three counts of homicide in connection to Tuesday’s shooting, but Friday’s death penalty announcement only pertains to Torres Santos.
“In my fourteen years as a Lebanon County prosecutor and in my nearly four years as the district attorney, we have not filed a death penalty notice in any case,” District Attorney Pier Hess Graf said in a Friday news release. “No other murder committed during my time as the D.A. has risen to the specific legal standard necessary to seek death for the killer. This case meets that standard.”
Graf said the case against Torres Santos meets the standard because multiple people died, two victims were under age 12, and because of “the grave risk to others posed by the defendant’s actions in a densely occupied city neighborhood.”
At least 27 rounds were fired from two different types of guns Tuesday night, Graf said. Prosecutors believe Torres Santos supplied the guns, and shots were fired into the victims’ homes.
Court documents said Torres Santos was out on bail for shooting the same man in Lebanon twice earlier this year when he carried out Tuesday’s shooting alongside Fernandez-Reyes and a third, still unidentified man. Court records showed Torres Santos was released from jail Feb. 23 after his bail on aggravated assault charges was lowered from $100,000 to $50,000.
Graf said Torres Santos wore a house-arrest bracelet — placed on him as a bail condition after his arrest for the prior shootings — to the scene of Tuesday’s shooting. He was identified by the county probation office as having traveled to the exact location of the homicides at the time they occurred.
Jesus died at the shooting scene, on his back porch on the 400 block of North Fifth Street, Lebanon police Chief Bret Fisher said Thursday. Sebastian was taken to a Dauphin County hospital, where he died. Lugo Perez died at a Lebanon County hospital.
Police said they believe Lugo Perez was targeted because of a prior disagreement.
“Many remain critical of the death penalty in today’s world. The process is lengthy and costly. To those who second guess today’s decision, we did not make it easily nor did we take the decision lightly,” Graf said Friday. “There are some crimes — crimes like this one where young children were shot to death outside of their home as they innocently played with their kittens — that demand we charge accordingly.”
READ MORE: Man stabbed outside central Pa. ice cream shop: police
Man shot in the face after Harrisburg resident finds him in bedroom with woman
Ad Choices