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Police: Men lured to apartment through app attacked with baseball bat in separate robberies

One of the victims died, police said.

After two vicious attacks in Gwinnett County over the weekend - one of them deadly - three people are in custody.

Gwinnett County police officers arrested two brothers, 22-year-old Russell Williams and 21-year-old Zarius Williams, along with 20-year-old Glenda Carter. Gwinnett authorities said two victims were robbed by the two men and woman and assaulted with a baseball bat. 

Officers were called to the Lealand Place Apartments west of Lawrenceville around 10:15 p.m. on Dec. 7.  There, they found 22-year-old Marcos Abraham Guerra unconscious with significant facial injuries.

The police report indicates Guerra's friend dropped him off to wait for a woman he was supposed to meet at the apartment complex. Guerra met the woman in an online app called MeetMe, the report said.

The friend later received a text from Guerra's phone, saying he had been beaten and needed help, the report said. He was taken to the hospital. Police said the hospital notified them he was brain dead. His body is being kept on a ventilator for an organ donation.

The friend was able to show police a picture of the woman from the app.

Credit: Gwinnett Police

The investigation led authorities to another attack that happened Sunday around 2 p.m. The 48-year-old victim drove to a nearby home after the attack.

The incident report said the victim met a woman at the apartment complex and went inside her bedroom, leaving his 10-year-old son in the car. That's when two men allegedly attacked him with a bat and a knife. His cell phone was stolen but he was able to fight off the suspects and drove away to a relative's home that was close by. 

Police said they learned during the course of their investigation that Carter was dating Russell Williams and that they were in the process of being evicted from the apartment complex. 

The victim in the Sunday robbery had a broken arm and head trauma, but police said he is expected to survive. 

These were two separate attacks and police said the victims didn't know each other. 

"Right now our indication is that they (the suspects) are targeting the individuals that responded to an ad placed on an app," Cpl. Michele Pihera, of Gwinnett Police said. 

The suspects' motives in both crimes appear to have been robbery, police said.

"We believe right now that both of our victims were lured to the apartment by the female," Pihera said. 

The Williams brothers and Carter were arrested at the Red Roof Inn on Brook Hollow Parkway in Norcross, Monday.

"We are very fortunate that these suspects were caught as quickly as they were," police said in a news released. "There is a strong possibility that more people could have been victimized by Glenda, Russell, and Zarius if they were not caught when they were."

The suspects are being charged with felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, and two counts of armed robbery. 

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