Jurors hear Luis Toledo’s suicide attempt on anniversary of disappearances
ST. AUGUSTINE — Felicita Perez and Michael Otto released balloons with pictures of their loved ones outside the courthouse on Monday morning, minutes before the trial of the Deltona man accused of killing his wife and her two children resumed.
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Prosecutors Ryan Will and Mark Johnson along with investigators say Toledo killed the mother and children and then disposed of their bodies.
But in the video of an interview with police in October 2013, played for the jury at the Richard O. Watson Judicial Center on Monday morning Toledo claimed his neighbor Tyshawn Jackson disposed of the bodies. Toledo said he did not know what Jackson did with the bodies. Toledo said Jackson told him it was better he didn’t know.
Jackson has not been charged in the crime and investigators said he is not involved in the murders.
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Toledo said that his wife Yessenia Saurez was angry after he invited his neighbor Jackson into his house early on the morning of Oct. 23, 2013, to play video games. Toledo says his wife was punching him in the chest but it wasn’t having any effect. He says she then hit him in the glasses.
Pagliari asked him if it was the glasses he was wearing. Toledo said yes but then quickly changed and said no that it was another pair. Toledo said that’s how he got a mark on his face.
He said he had told his wife that to defend herself to gouge a man in his eyes. He said he was afraid she would do that to him.
Toledo said he lashed out, making it sound almost like a reflex. He launched his right arm straight out like throwing a punch. He said the punch caught her in the neck.
Toledo said his wife fell back and died from the punch.
He said her two children walked in and started asking what had happened to their mother. Toledo said Jackson took the kids in another room and killed them to eliminate them as witnesses.
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