Suspect in Route 355 murder calls his arrest ‘crazy’

State’s attorney announces new plan for improving trust in the Latino community

‘‘I don’t know about this situation. I never knew about this situation,” Detric Lewarren Thompson, 28, said April 2 in a phone interview from the Montgomery County Detention Center, where he is being held without bond. ‘‘I knew nothing about this whole situation. This is crazy; this is crazy. They’re trying to take my life away.”

Thompson was arrested on a first-degree murder charge on March 28 in the Feb. 17 beating death of Aureliano Evelio Miranda-Fuentes.

That charge came after Thompson’s March 8 arrest on charges of first-degree burglary and resisting arrest after he allegedly broke into a unit in the Gaither House Apartments on Route 355, the same complex where Miranda-Fuentes was beaten to death by three men wielding pipes and a baseball bat, according to police.

Thompson, listed in numerous court records as living at his family’s Bethesda home, was sentenced last year to four years of supervised probation after a conviction for dealing crack-cocaine in Gaithersburg.

His parents believe that Montgomery County Police have pinned the beating death on their son as retribution for him having avoided two other drug prosecutions last year, and said Thompson lives in Frederick County.

Acknowledging his son’s criminal record, Thompson’s father, Leo Thompson, is adamant that his son would not turn to violent crime, and is especially outraged by the suggestion that his son said he was targeting Hispanics in the burglary, as described in police charging documents.

When Thompson was arrested on March 8, he admitted to breaking into the apartment and to being on drugs, according to charging documents. The documents state that he told the arresting officer that he broke into the apartment ‘‘because Hispanics live there and I hate them. They are taking all our jobs.”

‘‘The Montgomery County Police Department has created a situation that’s racist. It’s racial and everything else you can imagine,” said Leo Thompson. ‘‘That whole thing makes it sound like we’re trying to start a race war. They made it up. And they did it so they could put somebody to a damn crime.”

Miranda-Fuentes’ death spiked fears among Latino that some immigrants are being targeted because criminals believe they will not cooperate with police for fear of being deported.

In response to the entreaty of Latino advocates, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy is putting together a special advisory group to examine the issue and get the word out that the immigrant community can trust law enforcement officials in coming forward as victims and witnesses to crimes.

‘‘I’m deeply concerned about anyone in our county could be profiled ... as a target where there will be almost no consequences,” McCarthy said in an interview. ‘‘We must protect all members of our community, to the extent that we can get the word out and encourage people, regardless of [immigration] status, to come forward. Victims do not choose to be victims, and if you turn your back on any victim, you create an atmosphere of permissiveness towards violence.”

He has seen the problem manifesting over the last two years. Whereas the problem stymies police investigations because some victims will not come forward, the State’s Attorney’s Office has had problems with people backing out of prosecutions, especially witnesses who refuse to testify in court, McCarthy said.

In the coming weeks, McCarthy will be announcing a multi-faceted approached to get the word out, putting special emphasis on Spanish-language radio and television.

He hopes to boost discussions with county police Chief J. Thomas Manger, as well as the chiefs of the Gaithersburg, Rockville and Takoma Park police forces, and he wants to look more closely at the training that first-level responders receive.

He said it’s not going to be easy to track results. As a matter of policy, county police do not categorically collect racial information at crime scenes.

‘‘It’s going to be very hard to show empirically ‘Here’s the baseline, and here’s what we’ve done,’” McCarthy said. ‘‘It’s going to be hard to get a hard number ... because you try to keep these reports racial neutral.”

McCarthy’s effort is a step in the right direction, said Grace Rivera-Oven, a Latino advocate and host of Montgomery Cable’s Spanish-language news show.

‘‘I’m very encouraged by his response,” she said. ‘‘This is a public safety issue for him, and I think it’s a tough-on-crime issue, too. So I think it benefits the whole community.”