LOUISVILLE - The bourbon had been stashed away and the hats returned to closets by the time someone found a groomer’s body inside a barn at Churchill Downs, hours after the running of America’s most famous horse race.
Other workers on the backside of the track - a different world from the pageantry seen on race day - were left to wonder if a killer was among them: Why did someone want 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez dead? How was the Guatemala native killed? And why did his killer leave him in a barn, a few stables away from where I’ll Have Another would bask in the glory of winning the Kentucky Derby?
Authorities have no suspects. An autopsy was done, but the coroner did not release the results....
A fence topped with razor wire separates the backside from a working-class neighborhood that surrounds the historic racetrack. On Monday, track security kept visitors without credentials outside the fence. But track workers wandered in and out, smoking cigarettes, talking on cellphones, and picking up lunch and gear from their cars.
Laura Belzia, a 38-year-old “hot walker’’ who has walked horses to cool them down after workouts for five years, said the backside of the track can sometimes be a rough place. Belzia described occasional fights.
Belzia said some of her co-workers may be reluctant to talk to police, either out of fear of the person who committed the crime or because they are in the country illegally....
Louisville police Lieutenant Barry Wilkerson said the death appears to have nothing to do with the Kentucky Derby but may be related to one of several fights reported that night....
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