Police in Florida City, Florida arrested 41-year-old Grether Leidy Guadarramas Pena for allegedly cutting a young male family member with a knife after reading online chat messages expressing his homosexuality.

Police arrested Pena after the boy reportedly told a school teacher about the alleged assault, WPLG reported.

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He called a trans woman “a man” & then pulled out a knife. Video captured the attack.

The boy, whose age hasn’t been publicly revealed, told investigators that his brother discovered his private, gay-related messages and images on the group chat application Discord and then showed them to another family member who forced him to stand facing a wall until Pena came home on the afternoon of Saturday, March 15.

When Pena saw the boy’s messages and images, she reportedly “grabbed him by the arm and took him into the kitchen,” a Florida City Police Department officer wrote in an official report. There, Pena “grabbed a knife and held his arm against the counter” and then told another male family member to help hold the boy’s hand down.

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The family member reportedly restrained the boy until they saw Pena cutting his arm with the knife. Seeing the harm, he let the boy go and pushed Pena away. The unnamed family member isn’t facing any charges for initially assisting with the assault.

Pena then reportedly cut the boy’s hair with scissors and later refused to talk with police the following Wednesday when officers investigated the boy’s claims made to his teacher.

Police arrested Guadarramas on a felony child abuse charge. A Miami-Dade judge found probable cause for the charge.

A 2023 study by the LGBTQ+ youth support organization The Trevor Project found that only 38% of queer youth reported their home as a place that affirms their sexual orientation or gender identitiy.

A 2024 Trevor Project study showed that 30% of cisgender youth felt safe and understood on the group chat website Discord. Approximately 74% of survey respondents said they go online to connect with others because it is difficult to do so in their daily lives, and 73% said they felt like they could be their complete selves online.

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