DANBURY \u2014 A Danbury church leader who works as a taxi driver has been found dead over the state line in New York in what police are calling a suspected homicide.<\/p>\n
Putnam County police confirmed those fears Monday evening and announced that Zhunio-Orbez’s death is now being investigated as a homicide.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur detectives are working tirelessly to determine what happened, identify the perpetrator, and deliver justice for Mr. Zhunio-Orbez and his family,” police said in a release.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Investigators believe Zhunio-Orbez was killed, then had his taxi cab \u2014 a black Toyota Sienna \u2014 stolen, according to police. The car was later found abandoned.<\/p>\n
“If you saw this vehicle or anything unusual, please contact us right away,\u201d police said.<\/p>\n
The 66-year-old’s son, Henry Zhunio, said Monday morning in a brief phone interview that they had suspected there might be a connection between his father’s disappearance and the weekend discovery of a body in Putnam County, \u201cbut we don\u2019t know.\u201d He didn’t return a call later in the day.<\/p>\n
Zhunio-Orbez’s boss\u00a0Juan Quezada Orbe, of Orbe\u2019s Taxi in Brewster, N.Y., said he, too, was concerned about his employee when he went missing earlier this month.<\/p>\n
He said Zhunio-Orbez disappeared\u00a0Dec. 1, when he picked up a passenger at the local train station. Zhunio-Orbez didn\u2019t return and didn’t pick up his phone, Orbe said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not unusual for Zhunio-Orbez to miss one or two calls, he said, but\u00a0Orbe began to get concerned by the second or third time he tried to contact him and couldn’t reach him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI call him about 1 something. And he didn\u2019t pick up the phone at all. I called him about 4 o\u2019clock again. I send a text…then I call him at 5, 6,\u201d Orbe said.<\/p>\n
A few days later, his car was found at another location, Orbe said. He got a call from a New York state trooper, but the trooper didn’t give him any information.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil two days later, we didn\u2019t know if he left the train station,\u201d he said, adding that his taxi cabs don’t have tracking devices.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to a Saturday Facebook post by Danbury police, Zhunio-Orbez last was seen about 11:30 a.m. Dec. 1 at the Brewster train station.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zhunio-Orbez is a longtime member and leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Danbury, where he has served for decades.<\/p>\n
“We extend our sincere condolences to the family and ask the community to keep them in their thoughts,” Danbury police spokesperson Erin Henry said in a brief statement Monday.<\/p>\n
Zhunio-Orbez leaves behind a wife and four children, according to\u00a0Orbe.<\/p>\n
Staff Writer Mike\u00a0Gagne contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DANBURY \u2014 A Danbury church leader who works as a taxi driver has been found dead over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[33996,9,11,10,49,51,50,28584],"class_list":["post-65127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-greaterdanbury","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}