A pair of accused thieves ransacked the Coral Gables home of a Florida couple killed in a Kenya helicopter crash, stealing luxury vehicles and a half-million-dollar sculpture.
Geybert Alexander Garcia, 40, and Melany Perdomo, 24, allegedly broke into the residence of Henry Parra, 55, and Adam Hlavaty, 42, sometime between Thursday and Saturday following the fatal crash last Wednesday. The couple were two of seven people who died when a tourist helicopter went down in a mountainside collision during a safari excursion.
Police said Garcia and Perdomo “ransacked the residence and removed numerous items belonging to the decedent such as personal and business documents, jewelry, electronics, and artwork,” according to an arrest report. They also made off with the victims’ 2023 Land Rover and 2020 Porsche Taycan.
Investigators tracked pings from a stolen MacBook and the Land Rover to the couple’s shared home in a nearby community. Both stolen vehicles were parked outside the residence when authorities arrived. Inside, they recovered “several valuable pieces of artwork … including an art sculpture belonging to the victims and valued in excess of approximately $500,000,” the report states.
Officers also discovered instruments used to produce or alter fraudulent documents, plus a Ford F-150 truck reported stolen out of Indian County.
The arrest report notes the helicopter crash but does not indicate how or whether the burglars learned of the couple’s deaths before targeting the home.
Garcia and Perdomo were each arrested on multiple felony charges including burglary and grand theft auto.
In court on Wednesday, Garcia’s attorney, Paul Basile, produced a document purportedly signed by one of the crash victims granting Garcia permission to use the vehicle and be on the property.
Lauren Bailey, a family friend of the victims who attended the hearing, rejected that claim outright. “They would have never done so. They had other people. They have a live-in maid that comes to the house every day. There would be no need to do such a thing,” she told WPLG.
Bailey described the break-in’s aftermath in stark terms. “The house was damaged; it was broken into. The door was destroyed. They ripped off the camera, which we’ve given the prosecutor the photos of that,” she continued. “His family came from Indiana and came home to a house that had been broken into and their things stolen, and they don’t feel comfortable if you let this person go.”
Coral Gables Police Department Detective Wilfredo Diaz confirmed to the court that he believed the document was a fake. The judge, who shared that skepticism, ordered both defendants held without bond.
In the viral moment that preceded the burglary, Parra and Hlavaty died alongside five others when their tourist helicopter crashed in Kenya’s mountains during a safari trip last Wednesday. The other victims included Telemundo executive José Suárez; Michele Sensi-Contugi, director general of Ecuador’s intelligence agency, and his wife Stephany Maria Hollihan Vasconez, a US dual citizen; millionaire food entrepreneur Roger Edward Duarte; and pilot Josh Outram. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
Garcia and Perdomo remain in custody without bond as the case proceeds.
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