Jonatan Nanita, 31, has been charged with attempted third-degree burglary in connection with an offense that took place on March 13, 2025 in Middlefield, according to an arrest warrant filed in state Superior Court in Middletown.
The warrant shows that a Ring camera captured an individual believed to be Nanita and another suspect appearing to force their way past the home’s front door before fleeing the area in a silver SUV.
Investigators later obtained additional camera footage that captured the same suspects breaking into the parked car of the homeowner’s wife in Plainfield and taking a purse shortly before the attempted burglary.
Police noted in the warrant that two men were later apprehended by New Britain police. Police said the other suspect in the case, Angel Lozada, was found with the wife’s missing payment cards at the time.
Nanita was arrested at the end of a daylong manhunt when New Britain officers investigating Torres-Garcia’s death tracked him and several of his associates to a gym where they were spotted driving stolen vehicles and trying to break into parked cars.
Prosecutors and police believe Nanita and his former girlfriend Karla Garcia, Jacqueline’s mother, starved and abused the child until she died and then hid her death for a year by keeping her body in a 40-gallon container in the basement of their rented Farmington condo.
Nanita and Karla Garcia have been charged with murder with special circumstances, conspiracy to commit murder with special circumstances, intentional cruelty to a child, first-degree unlawful restraint and risk of injury to a child in the 11-year-old’s death.
The couple is accused of starving the child and using zip ties to restrain her in the weeks before her death, previous arrest and search warrants said. Medical examiners determined she died from “fatal child abuse with starvation” and ruled the death a homicide.
Nanita has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His attorney, Michael Brown, has argued that his client wasn’t in a parental role so he didn’t have a duty to report the abuse the child suffered in the weeks leading to her death.
