A 16-year-old from Norcross already being held on a felony murder charge has been arrested and charged with a second, unrelated murder from 2019, the GBI announced Monday.

Leslie Garcia-Juarez is facing new counts of felony murder and aggravated assault after she was arrested at the Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Center, according to GBI spokeswoman Natalie Ammons.

Garcia-Juarez was arrested in late December in the shooting death of 22-year-old Adaph Aimable. The new charges stem from the murder of 19-year-old Osiel Montano almost exactly one year earlier, according to Ammons.

According to the GBI, Norcross police requested help from the state agency in working a homicide investigation on Dec. 30, 2019. Montano’s body had been found in an abandoned apartment in the Spring Lake apartment complex in Norcross, Ammons said. Montano was dead from a single gunshot wound to the head.

“It was determined that Garcia-Juarez shot and killed Montano and then fled the scene,” Ammons said in a news release.

She said the charges were the “result of a lengthy murder investigation.”

On Dec. 29, Gwinnett County police officers were called to the 4300 block of Satellite Boulevard near Duluth just after 9 a.m. about a report of a shooting inside of a unit at the The Maddox apartment complex. Garcia-Juarez was arrested days later and charged as an adult in Aimable’s death, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.

The investigation into Montano’s killing remains ongoing and the GBI asks anyone with information to contact them. Tips can be submitted by calling 1-800-597-8477 or online at https://gbi.georgia.gov/submit-tips-online.

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Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff (left) and Raphael Warnock — along with the other 45 members in the Democratic caucus —opposed the reconciliation bill that passed the Senate Tuesday. The legislation would extend tax cuts and slash federal spending on safety net programs. (Ben Hendren for the AJC 2024)

Credit: Ben Hendren for the AJC