Mom, 1-year-old son found killed week after husband is fatally shot, PA cops say
A week after a man was discovered dead with a gunshot wound to the head, his wife and 1-year-old son were found dead on consecutive days, Pennsylvania authorities say.
Authorities in Berks County and Reading say all three victims were killed, and a man is in custody in connection with one of the killings.
The investigation began Sept. 13 when Reading officers discovered the body of Junior Cabrera-Colon, police said. The 31-year-old man was found fatally shot in brush.
Officers said they took a 61-year-old man, Jose Luis Rodriguez, into custody after Cabrera-Colon’s death. He confessed to killing the man, police said, telling officers he dumped his body.
Rodriguez was charged with first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse, authorities say.
Meanwhile, Cabrera-Colon’s wife and 1-year-old son — Geraldina Peguero-Mancebo and Jeydon Junior Peguero — had been reported missing. Police said they were last seen Sept. 12, a day before Cabrera-Colon was found dead.
Reading police issued a missing endangered person advisory for the mother and son Sept. 16, saying they “may be at special risk of harm or injury.”
On Sept. 19, investigators found the body of Peguero-Mancebo, 31, in a grassy field, according to the Berks County District Attorney’s Office. The mother, who authorities say was “the victim of foul play” was discovered about 5 miles away from her husband’s body.
The next day, investigators found the body of the 1-year-old partially submerged about 150 yards away from where his mom was discovered, the district attorney said. He, too, had been killed, according to the investigators.
“This was the devil work; this is not normal,” Heinel Medrano Mancebo, a relative of the family, told WFMZ. “How can you kill a 1-year-old baby? How do you have the heart?”
Their causes of death have not been released. Authorities have not publicly identified Rodriguez as a suspect in the mother and son’s deaths.
Loved ones said in a GoFundMe that Peguero-Mancebo and Cabrera-Colon were parents to four children. Their oldest three children, according to the GoFundMe, are in the Dominican Republic.
Medrano Mancebo wondered what was going through the mother’s mind in her final moments.
“She might have been thinking about her family — the other three children, her mother, the grandmother — because we were all close,” Medrano Mancebo told WFMZ.
Authorities said the investigation is ongoing. A news briefing will be held Sept. 29 with further information, prosecutors said.
Reading is about a 65-mile drive northwest from Philadelphia.
This story was originally published September 24, 2025 at 9:39 AM with the headline "Mom, 1-year-old son found killed week after husband is fatally shot, PA cops say."