LOUISVILLE, Ky. — 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 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?
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Authorities have no suspects. An autopsy was done, but the coroner refused to release the results.
“Everybody wants to catch the guy who did that,” said Faustino Aguilar, a 29-year-old exercise rider with six years of experience at the track. “They do it once, they may do it more.”
Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner in Louisville, said an autopsy revealed injuries on a body found in a barn at Churchill Downs about 4:50 a.m. Sunday, roughly 10 hours after the race.
The Kentucky Derby is known for stylish hats, lots of bets, mint juleps and wild parties. But separated from the cheering fans by the dirt surface and the infield, the backside is a maze of green-roofed barns, horse stalls, thoroughbreds, bales of hay and about 200 mostly Hispanic people who live there at any given time — either in dormitories on the edge of the property or in small apartments above some of the barns themselves. Police said Perez lived in quarters on the track.
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.
Louisville Police Lt. 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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