# Prosecutors believe transgender man Sam Nordquist faced torture before death; 7 indicted

A grand jury indictment of seven suspects in the  revealed new details about the kinds of torture investigators believe he endured.

Nordquist, a , was found dead in a field in upstate New York in February and police said he had been "subjected to ongoing physical abuse," though they did not suspect a .

Over the following weeks,  and the indictment includes 11 charges ranging from first-degree murder to sexual abuse to concealment of a human corpse.

Ontario County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Wolford said at a press conference Wednesday that the suspects kidnapped Nordquist after he traveled from Minnesota voluntarily and held him captive in Canandaigua. Wolford said the crime was not a hate crime, and it was "so much bigger" than that.

"Sam deserves to have his story told in full," she said. "He was beaten, assaulted, sexually abused, starved and held captive. We cannot reduce this to a hate crime charge alone."

## Children forced to take part in torture, assistant district attorney says

Arzuaga was also charged with two counts of first-degree coercion for allegedly forcing a seven-year-old and a 12-year-old to participate in the torture, Wolford said.

"We have a seven-year-old and a 12-year-old who are also victims," Wolford said. "They may have been forced to participate, but their lives are forever changed by what they saw and endured. We are here, not just for Sam, but to seek justice for those two children as well."

Investigators did not disclose Arzuaga’s relationship to the two children.

## LGBTQ+ community held tributes to Sam Nordquist

Communities in the Finger Lakes region and New York City held vigils for Nordquist after his death made headlines. Tributes have also poured in from across the nation from LGBTQ+ organizations and individual advocates.

, the state's largest advocacy organization for LGBTQ+ issues, , "we must all commit ourselves to the work of ending violence and discrimination."

"**We know this arrives at a time our trans communities are facing a relentless assault of harmful policy and rhetoric across our nation,"** the group said in a post on Instagram. "We know that this landscape escalates and amplifies the individual risk of violence."

In Nordquist's home state of Minnesota, Minnesota Rep. Leigh Finke, the first openly transgender member of the state's legislature, shared a memorial post on Instagram. "You deserved a whole life, full of love and joy and peace," Finke said. "He was always a man of courage and faith. He was a real man."

_**Kinsey Crowley is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY.** Reach her at kcrowley@gannett.com, and follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley._

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