Posted on 12/15/2005 8:56:36 PM PST by Valin
JERSEY CITY - Prosecutors will ask that two men charged with murdering a city family during a botched robbery last January be sentenced to death if found guilty, authorities said Friday.
No date has been set for the trial of Edward McDonald, 25, and Hamilton Sanchez, 31, both of whom were formally arraigned on murder charges this month. Both men have pleaded not guilty to the violent slayings of Hossam Armanious, his wife, Amal Garas, and their two young daughters.
"Both of them are designated as capital murder cases," said Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio. "We're seeking the death penalty."
Authorities said they believe McDonald killed the father and 9-year-old Monica Armanious, and Sanchez knifed Garas and 16-year-old Sylvia Armanious.
The age of the victims and the fact that the murders were an attempt to hinder apprehension after McDonald was recognized by one of the daughters are aggravating factors that make the death penalty a possibility, DeFazio said.
DeFazio said the trial probably won't begin until at least next fall.
The killings caused tension between the city's Muslim and Coptic Christian communities and sparked rumors about the connection of Islamic extremists to the killings. The Armanious family were from Coptic Christians from Egypt.
In an early March raid on |McDonald's Jersey City Heights apartment, authorities recovered a gun that they said was used to subdue the family, as well as distribution quantities of high-grade "hydro" marijuana, DeFazio said.
The FBI said McDonald confessed to the slayings under questioning. He told investigators that he and Sanchez stabbed the family to death during a push-in robbery after the youngest daughter recognized McDonald, according to authorities.
McDonald lived with his girlfriend in an apartment above the family at the time of the murders and met Sanchez while in jail on drug charges.
Sanchez is on federal parole for conspiring to import more than 3 kilograms of cocaine and more than 1 kilogram of heroin in 1995 and lived in a Newark halfway house.
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