Pedro Bravo will face additional charges in the Christian Aguilar murder case after an Alachua County grand jury met Thursday.
The grand jury indicted Bravo, 19, on five new charges, which suggests he may have drugged and suffocated Aguilar, an 18-year-old UF freshman, in addition to the first-degree murder and kidnapping indictment he received Oct. 8, according to court records from the Alachua County Clerk of the Court.
Bravo was charged with poisoning food and/or water with the intent to kill or injure a person, lying to police, filing a false police report and illegally moving human remains.
The grand jury also charged Bravo with tampering with physical evidence when he tried to hide duct tape, a shovel and Aguilar’s personal belongings as well as attempting to bury the body, according to the court records.
Aguilar and Bravo were former classmates who graduated from Doral Academy Preparatory School together before coming up to Gainesville to attend college.
While Aguilar studied biomedical engineering at UF, Bravo went to Santa Fe College, where he was enrolled in two classes, said one of Bravo’s roommates in an interview.
On Sept. 20, Aguilar was last seen with Bravo walking into a southwest Gainesville Best Buy, where Aguilar planned to buy Kanye West’s new album “Cruel Summer,” according to Alligator archives.
The next day, Aguilar was reported missing to University Police. In an interview with Gainesville Police, Bravo told detectives he beat Aguilar and left him in a northwest Gainesville parking lot.
On Sept. 24, police arrested Bravo on a charge of depriving a victim of medical care and booked him into the Alachua County Jail, where he remains as of Thursday night.
For the next month, Aguilar’s family, along with Gainesville and Miami residents, teamed up with police to search for Christian Aguilar, combing through woods and swamps across the area.
During the investigation, police said they found blood inside Bravo’s 2004 Chevy Trailblazer, Aguilar’s backpack in Bravo’s closet, and a receipt that showed Bravo purchased a roll of duct tape and shovel four days before Aguilar went missing.
On Oct. 12, two hunters found Aguilar’s half-buried body inside a wooded Levy County hunting club. Since the body’s discovery, the State Attorney’s Office and Bravo’s defense council, which includes public defender Alan Chipperfield, have been preparing for trial. Bravo already pled not guilty in the murder and kidnapping charges, and will make his plea in the additional charges at his next arraignment.
In the midst of unanswered questions, the Aguilar family held a funeral service Oct. 23 in Miami, bringing them closure.
Today is Christian Aguilar’s birthday.
He would have been 19.
Contact Chris Alcantara at calcantara@alligator.org.
