An illegal immigrant from Roslindale suspected in two city stabbings and wanted for a murder in Philadelphia earlier this year is being held without bail and now faces deportation.
Wagner Tejeda-Pena, 24, was arraigned Friday afternoon in municipal court in West Roxbury on two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, a knife, connected to two stabbings in Roslindale in February. A dangerousness hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.
He’s also the suspect in the June 21 Philadelphia murder of Loi Nguyen, 76, whose body was found in an alleyway off L Street with a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Philadelphia Police Department. Nguyen was pronounced dead at 5:44 a.m. by medics at the scene.
Just 15 minutes before, according to the PPD, Tejeda-Pena is accused of trying to shoot two others on E. Luzerne Street but the gun malfunctioned. The targets fought back but were unable to disarm the suspect and he ran away.
After a multi-state search, Tajeda-Pena was located and arrested shortly before 11:30 p.m. Thursday in Lawrence.
Tejeda-Pena — who also goes by the first name Wagner, according to the BPD, and the name “Elia,” according to charging documents — is in the country illegally and is on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer, according to an ICE source.
In Boston, Tajeda-Pena allegedly approached a co-worker at about 10:20 a.m. Feb. 13 outside a chain pizza shop on Washington Street and told him that he thinks the co-worker is his biological father, according to a police report, and the two argued over this assertion.
Tajeda-Pena then allegedly pulled out a folding knife and attempted to stab the man twice in the chest but missed and ended up stabbing the man in the right thigh, leaving a 1-inch laceration, the report states.
About three hours later, another man was stabbed and Tajeda-Pena was identified as the suspect, according to the police report.
In this case, the man was making lunch in the kitchen of his aunt’s apartment, where he had been staying for some months, when a man — who the victim stated he did not know — approached him from behind and said, “So this is where you live?” and then stabbed him in the face with a black folding knife, the report alleges.
The victim was then able to push the aggressor into the living room and get some distance before the intruder lunged at him and sliced his inner left bicep, the report states. The victim ran into the bedroom of a sleeping cousin and attempted to shut the door but Tajeda-Pena allegedly prevented him from doing so.
A short while later, the victim was able to run back to the kitchen and arm himself with a knife, but the suspect was already gone, according to the report.
Responding police noted in the report that they found blood in the snow outside and on the resident’s front porch and more splattered along the stair to the upper floor and then inside the kitchen and the bedroom.
ICE has a detainer on the suspect in stabbings here and a murder in Philadelphia. (Staff Photo By Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)