MIAMI – Angry over a homeless man’s catcall, four friends went on a “feeding frenzy,” police said, beating the elderly man to death with a metal chair, a steel rebar, a rock and a wooden stick.

Two men accused in Saturday’s attack are the sons of Christian clergymen. All four have been charged with second degree murder.

According to a police report, the attack was sparked when Janice Guillen, 18, went to her car to get cigarettes. Guillen told police she heard Jose Perez, 67, who was in the building across the street, toss out a pickup line “she felt was nasty,” the report said. She told police she confronted Perez and punched him in the face.

Perez allegedly hit her back, prompting Magdiel Wingfield, 28, Kevin Stone, 27, and Jason Cardenas, 19, to join in and allegedly jump Perez, punching and kicking him and hitting him with the chair, the rebar and the other objects. At one point they pushed Perez through a glass door, police said.

shattering it, the police report said.

Perez was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he died from his injuries.

Wingfield and Cardenas’ fathers are clergymen with the Soldiers of the Cross church based in Little Havana. Neither could be reached for comment on Wednesday.


Earlier this year, Guillen was arrested on a misdemeanor theft charge, according to court records. Wingfield was arrested for misdemeanor battery in 2005, but charges were dropped earlier this year. In 1998, he was also arrested for malicious destruction of property and entered a pretrial diversion program.

Police are trying to locate Perez’s relatives. He apparently lived in the hallway of the building where he was killed and did odd jobs for people in the neighborhood, Schwartz said.

“He seemed to be a harmless guy,” Schwartz said. “Granted, he might not have been the most gentle or the most sophisticated of people, but he certainly did not deserve this type of torturous end to his life.”


The brutal beating is part of a nationwide trend of increased violence against the homeless, said homeless advocate Sean Cononie.

Cononie pointed to the case of three teens awaiting trial in the beating death last January of a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., homeless man. William “Billy” Ammons, 18, Thomas Daugherty, 17, and Brian Hooks, 18, are also facing two counts each of attempted murder for allegedly beating two other homeless men. Across the country, homeless people have been set on fire, decapitated and killed in other gruesome ways, Cononie said.

“These crimes toward the homeless are always vicious,” he said. “I guess people don’t put a value on homeless people’s lives.”

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(South Florida Sun-Sentinel staff researcher William Lucey contributed to this report.)

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(c) 2006 South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

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AP-NY-09-06-06 1847EDT