New York police name three murder suspects in alleged drugging robberies

Police have identified three suspects charged in the murders of two men who were robbed and fatally drugged last year in Manhattan after they visited gay nightclubs in New York City.

The suspects are Jayqwan Hamilton, 35, and Robert Demaio, 34, of Brooklyn as well as Jacob Barroso, 30, from Harlem.

At 4.10am, the taxi driver approached a police officer to report that Ramirez, who was alone in the taxi, was unresponsive. Ramirez was pronounced dead at a hospital less than an hour later and according to his family, his phone had been taken, its password changed and $20,000 was taken from his bank account.

In one instance, 33-year-old Oscar Alarcon said that he was drugged in March 2020 and woke up on the floor in a hotel in midtown Manhattan with $2,000 drained from his bank account.

Authorities last month said that the fatal fentanyl overdose of a 35-year-old fashion designer, Kathryn Marie Gallagher, who was found dead in her Lower East Side apartment last July, was a homicide, New York Daily News reports.

It remains unclear if Hamilton, Demaio and Barroso are at all linked to her death. The New York Daily News, citing law enforcement sources, reported that each of the men has prior drug-related arrests but did not elaborate on the outcomes of those cases.