Insets (left to right): Juan Jose Erazo Herrera, Juan Carlos Alberto-Serrano, and Wilber Arnulfo Cartagena-Hernandez (Polk County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The Crookston Inn in Crookston, Minn. (Google Maps).
Three Minnesota men who worked together and lost their jobs reportedly wanted their colleague to quit with them — and allegedly attacked him when he didn’t.
Juan Jose Erazo Herrera, 26; Wilber Arnulfo Cartagena-Hernandez, 35; and Juan Carlos Alberto-Serrano, 29, were all charged with assault in connection with the beating of a man who was staying at the Crookston Inn in Crookston, Minnesota.
According to criminal complaints reviewed by Law&Crime, police responded to a call from another man on July 23 who said he was in charge of a crew that built grain bins and was staying at the hotel. All four of the men were working in the same crew, but their boss told police that two of them — Alberto-Serrano and Erazo Herrera — were fired. Cartagena-Hernandez quit in response to the firings.Â
The boss told police that a fourth worker was in the hospital after being assaulted by the other three men.
Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.
Police went to the emergency room at RiverView Health hospital in Crookston and spoke to the injured man through an interpreter. The victim told police that earlier that day, Erazo Herrera said “if everyone did not quit, he would kill them that night.” When Erazo Herrera and the other two suspects came to his room, “they assaulted him because he refused to quit the job,” according to the complaint.
Erazo Herrera allegedly hit the victim in the head with a rock, which was allegedly given to him by Alberto-Serrano. The victim reportedly told police that while Erazo Herrera beat him, Alberto-Serrano and Cartagena-Hernandez held him down. After the men left, the victim went to find his boss to tell him what happened. He told police that “he had a lot of blood on his head.” The police officer who spoke to the victim at the hospital noted that he had a “large gash” on his head behind his hairline.
The man who came to the hospital with the victim said he did not know the men, but the victim told him that the three suspects said “they were going to kill everybody that night.”
When police went back to the victim’s room at the Crookston Inn where the alleged assault took place, they found blood spatter on the “mattress, lamp, walls, floor, and nightstand.” In a different room nearby, they found Alberto-Serrano asleep in bed and arrested him. Police also found a white towel covered in bloodstains and tied in a knot. When they untied the knot, police said they found four “golf-ball-sized rocks” in it.
Police said surveillance video captured Alberto-Serrano tying a white towel in a knot. According to the complaint, he was soon joined by Cartagena-Hernandez and Erazo Herrera as all three men entered the victim’s room.
All three suspects were arrested days after the alleged attack and charged with assault; they are in custody at the Polk County Jail. They are all scheduled to appear in court on July 30.
The post Fired workers beat their colleague with rocks and threatened to kill him if he did not quit in solidarity: Police first appeared on Law & Crime.
