Fired Workers Accused of Attacking Colleague With Rocks After He Refused to Quit in Solidarity

A construction crew’s dispute over a round of firings turned violent when three coworkers allegedly beat a fourth man with rocks after he refused to quit alongside them.

Law&Crime reported on Tuesday, July 28, that Juan Jose Erazo-Herrera, 26, Wilber Arnulfo Castagena-Hernandez, 35, and Juan Carlos Alberto-Serrano, 29, have been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon tied to the attack at the Crookston Inn in Crookston, Minnesota. The men worked together with a fourth crew member building grain bins.

Their boss told police Erazo-Herrera and Alberto-Serrano had been fired, and Castagena-Hernandez quit in response.

The fourth crew member, who was not let go, ended up hospitalized after the alleged attack.

Speaking to police through an interpreter at RiverView Health hospital, the man said Erazo-Herrera warned earlier that day that “if everyone did not quit, he would kill them that night,” per USSA News.

The three men “assaulted him because he refused to quit the job,” the complaint states.

Erazo-Herrera allegedly struck his coworker in the head with a rock passed to him by Alberto-Serrano while Castagena-Hernandez and Alberto-Serrano held him down, police said.

The victim said “he had a lot of blood on his head” afterward, and the responding officer noted a “large gash” behind his hairline.

A man who accompanied the construction worker to the hospital told police the suspects said “they were going to kill everybody that night.”

As per Law&Crime, investigators searching the hotel found blood spatter on the “mattress, lamp, walls, floor, and nightstand,” along with a bloodstained towel containing four “golf-ball-sized rocks.”

Surveillance footage allegedly showed Alberto-Serrano tying the towel before Castagena-Hernandez and Erazo-Herrera joined him and entered the victim’s room.

All three suspects are in custody at the Polk County Jail and scheduled to appear in court July 30.