An illegal immigrant has admitted to strangling a 21-year-old woman to death inside an upstate Airbnb on her birthday, driving her body past a police cruiser before burying her in the woods.
John Moises Chacaguasay-Ilbiz, a 21-year-old Ecuadorian national, was charged Tuesday in a Syracuse courtroom with second-degree murder in the cold-blooded June 18 killing of Joseline Joana Toakiza, who was celebrating her birthday. Pleaded guilty to murder. Prosecutors announced this Thursday.
Chilling surveillance video shows the gunman and victim entering the Syracuse Airbnb home and then exiting with Toakiza's body slung over their shoulders as a cruiser passes by.
Syracuse police later confirmed it was one of their police vehicles, but declined further comment.
Police said Chacaguasai Ilbisu took the victim's body to nearby Lincoln Park, buried it in a shallow grave and then left the scene.
Authorities said Toakisa, also from Ecuador, had known the gunman since childhood.
Chacaguasay-Ilbis turned himself in to police a few days later and was charged with murder.
The murderous immigrant illegally crossed the U.S. border in El Paso in January 2023, according to Homeland Security officials, but was released because there was no space to detain him.
Toakiza, who attended elementary school with Chacaguasay-Ilbiz in Ecuador, illegally entered the United States several months later in Lukeville, Arizona, on June 19, 2023, officials said.
She told Border Patrol agents that she was fleeing an abusive boyfriend in her home country, but it was unclear whether that was the person who ultimately killed her, officials said.
She was given a date for a hearing in an asylum court, but was killed before that date.
Police said Chacaguasay strangled the victim to death using a ligature.
In court this week, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and concealing a corpse and is scheduled to be sentenced on February 14 to 22 years in prison, three times less than the maximum sentence.
