It was just a year ago when a Chelsea police officer found Luis Fernando Orellana Ruano sleeping in Kayem Park one December night.

Orellana Ruano, 17, was new to the country, the officer learned, and living on the streets. So he took the teenager to NewBridge Cafe for a plate of their famous steak tips, Chelsea Police Chief Brian Kyes recalled.

“I’ve never had steak tips before,’’ Orellana Ruano told the officer, who connected him to a local social services group that eventually found him a home in Lynn, Kyes said.

Last week, on Christmas Eve, the teenager the officer tried to save from the streets was fatally stabbed in East Boston, the city’s 44th homicide victim this year. Police found his body near Sartori Memorial Stadium and are investigating whether his killing is connected to the deaths of four other teenage boys in the neighborhood since September 2015, at least three of which police believe were gang-related.

Authorities identified Orellana Ruano, who was 18, as the stabbing victim on Wednesday.

Orellana Ruano is among the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who have fled violence and poverty in Central America in recent years. Orellana Ruano told police he was from El Salvador but told Chelsea school officials he was from Guatemala, according to Kyes.

The Guatemalan and Salvadoran consulates in New England said Wednesday that they had not been notified of his death.

There was conflicting information about when Orellana Ruano entered the country, but government officials said he arrived here from Guatemala in 2012 or 2013.

He was detained at the border and, after a stint in the custody of federal Health and Human Services in Florida, was released to a relative in Massachusetts, officials said.

At one point, he attended Chelsea High School for six weeks and lived with a sponsor, Kyes said. But when that relationship fell apart, he began living on the streets.

The Chelsea police officer who found Orellana Ruano connected him to a program that helps at-risk and homeless youth. Orellana Ruano was found to be “acutely at-risk’’ and was placed in a group home and then in a foster home in Lynn, Kyes said.

The state’s Department of Children and Families works with the Chelsea program and is “providing assistance to law enforcement in its investigation,’’ said Andrea Grossman, an agency spokeswoman.

Grossman declined to provide further information, citing the ongoing investigation.

Orellana Ruano was the second teenager found dead in East Boston this month. On Dec. 9, police discovered the body of a 16-year-old who had been reported missing a month earlier. Officials have not publicly identified him.

Police have said investigators are searching for connections between the two killings, as well as the murders of three other teenagers that federal prosecutors linked to the international street gang MS-13, a criminal enterprise whose members use machetes, knives, and chains to kill their victims.

Police said this week that detectives are looking at the potential involvement of MS-13 or their 18th Street gang rivals in the two recent killings.

Police and advocates said young immigrants who arrive here alone or adrift are quickly targeted by gangs, recruited into a life of violence they thought they had left behind.

“They say, ‘Where are you from? You’re from where we grew up. You need to roll with us to get along in this country,’ ’’ Kyes said of the gangs.

Yotam Zeira, a spokesman for Roca, a Chelsea-based nonprofit that works with at-risk youth, said the hardships facing young people who have fled Central America deserve far greater attention.

“These murders and violence are very tragic and unacceptable,’’ he said. “Each one of these murders is a very painful reminder that there’s more that needs to be done.’’

Antonio Arevalo, a community activist, said he is helping organize a vigil Thursday in East Boston to remember the teenagers killed this year and call attention to the violence.

Cristofer Perez-De La Cruz, 16, was killed in East Boston in January with a gun, knives, and a machete after MS-13 leaders in Virginia told leaders of local “cliques’’ that their crews needed to be more violent, according to court records.

Wilson Martinez, 15, and Irvin de Paz, 16, were killed in September 2015 after MS-13 leaders ordered subordinates to murder rivals, officials said in January after charging 56 people swept up in early morning raids. Federal officials also said MS-13 gang members had killed 29-year-old Javier Ortiz in December 2014 in Chelsea, and Katerin Gomez, a 35-year-old mother of three hit by a stray bullet in October 2014, also in Chelsea.

Jan Ransom can be reached at jan.ransom@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Jan_Ransom.Maria Sacchetti can be reached at msacchetti@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @mariasacchetti.