Day laborer charged in two deaths

By Mary Manning

Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008 | 12:44 p.m.

Metro Police

Yiorkis Laurencio Pineda

When Metro Police homicide detectives solved the June 27 homicide of 61-year-old Otilia Soares, they learned the suspect was possibly linked to another murder a month earlier.

Police today identified 32-year-old Yiorkis Laurendcio Pineda, a day laborer, as the suspect in both murders.

At 8:36 p.m. May 30, the husband of 67-year-old Patricia Brafford called police and said he had returned home from work to find his wife dead in their home on Del Amo Street, in the northeastern Las Vegas Valley.

Homicide detectives linked Brafford's homicide to Pineda when they discovered he had pawned her jewelry.

Pineda faces charges of one count each of murder with a deadly weapon, murder of a victim over 60 years of age, robbery with a deadly weapon, first-degree kidnapping with a deadly weapon of a victim over 60 and robbery with a deadly weapon of a victim over 60.

The Criminal Apprehension Team arrested Pineda July 3 after it investigated the fatal beating of Soares outside her home on June 27.

Police were called to a home in the 4400 block of East Stewart Avenue after a man returned to his house from a local home supply store and found his wife dead on a walkway leading to the back yard of their home.

Soares and her husband had hired a day laborer to help with home repairs, police said. Police then arrested Pineda on one count of murder with a deadly weapon and one count of robbery with a deadly weapon.

The district attorney's office has told police that prosecutors will seek the death penalty in the deaths of Soares and Brafford.