Arrest in triple homicide

TAMPA - Investigators with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office have made an arrest in a triple murder that the sheriff said was gang-related.

Deputies arrested 18-year-old Prentiss Jackson.

They are still looking for at least one other person: 19-year-old Esteban Merchan. They say Merchan attacked a fourth man, who survived.

The murders took place last Tuesday at a home on Oakwood Avenue in Brandon.

The three victims were Vincent Thomas, 22; Tony Black, 22; and Rafael Guadalupe, 21.

Thomas and Black had been shot, and Guadalupe had been stabbed.

Family and friends of the murdered men still reject it, but the sheriff says he's convinced the three died because of gang connections. It may even have been a hit over drugs or gang secrets. One of the victims, Tony Black, is a confirmed member of the Bloods gang, deputies say.

Sheriff David Gee laid out what deputies know after a week's investigation.

"There are five people who show up from Central Florida," Gee said. "They travel down Interstate 4 that night, stop, make a purchase before they get there, buy some gloves, go to the house, get there shortly before midnight, and everything occurs right after midnight."

Prentiss Jackson, jailed in Osceola county, has been charged in two of the murders. Deputies are looking for Esteban Mechan, also a Bloods member, and three other men they won't publicly identify as they wait for blood and DNA evidence.

Deputies say they found gang-related materials in the house where the men were killed.

"We found letters," Gee said. "We found letters from known gang members to someone at that address that suggests involvement with gang members, and it did make references to rules and things of that nature."

Gee says among the possible motives, that the killers came to recover a gang rule book.

"What else could have been there that night that they took with them, we don't know," Gee said.

Given the difficulty working with forensics and reluctant gang members, the Sheriff says it could be weeks before they sort it all out, but he insists they will.