Honduran man charged in murder of Chelsea 17-year-old Juan Carlos Lemus
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Flor Daniela Lemus is the mother of homicide victim Juan Carlos Lemus, a 17-year-old Chelsea high schooler. She is with a photograph taken of him in El Salvador by his father.
Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
On Thursday, Assistant District Attorney Cailin Campbell said Lopez-Padilla and another man, Ezer Ramirez-Maldonado, approached Lemus and his friend and attacked them.
'The defendant and Ramirez-Maldonado stabbed the two juveniles,' Campbell said in court. 'One died from his injuries, the other survived.'
Ramirez-Maldonado fled the country before he was apprehended, Campbell said. Another alleged accomplice, a 17-year-old Chelsea resident, has been charged with one count of accessory after the fact and will be arraigned in juvenile court.
Lemus mother, Flor Daniela Lemus, sat in the front row of the courtroom during the arraignment. She could not look Lopez-Padilla in the eyes, as she wanted; he was kept out of view, in a chamber adjacent to the courtroom. In a brief interview, Lemus said she did not yet know how to feel, but was looking forward to her son's killer being held to account.
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'It's what I'm waiting for: justice,' she said.
Campbell said Lopez-Padilla was in the country illegally and was an 'extreme flight risk' with few community ties to Chelsea.
Juan Carlos Lemus was born in an Iowa hospital and spent his early childhood in San Salvador, his mother's home city. In 2015, the year he and his mother moved to Chelsea, the collapse of a truce between rival gangs MS-13 and Barrio 18 led to a massive spike in homicides in El Salvador, giving the country the
.
In an interview last month, Lemus' mother said she brought her son to the United States to escape gang violence and give him a chance at a peaceful life.
'I wanted to give my son a better education,' she said. 'A better future.'
Rates of violence against young people have increased in Chelsea in recent years, even as overall violent crime has dropped since 2016, when authorities arrested dozens of Boston-area members of the international criminal organization MS-13 in a
There were 67 violent crimes reported in Chelsea against people 18 or younger in 2023, a 45 percent increase over the previous year, according to a Globe analysis of Chelsea Police data. Those crimes dropped last year but spiked again in the first four months of 2025. This year, more than half of those victims are 15 or younger, including the friend of Juan Carlos who was stabbed in the same incident.
Lemus, who works at a check cashing business in Chelsea, described her son as a sharp, well-behaved kid, who never saw or experienced violence at home.
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'My house was full of values, honor, and respect,' she said.
But he was the target of bullying in middle school, which contributed to severe depression, Lemus said. In 2022, Juan Carlos fatally stabbed the father of a classmate, who had confronted him with a gun after the boys got into a fight.
'After that, he was never the same,' Lemus said. 'He always had a dark stare.'
Last year, Middlesex prosecutors charged Juan Carlos with manslaughter as an adult. The case was dismissed after his death.
Dan Glaun can be reached at
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