Suspect in murder of 11-year-old girl in Texas, Juan Carlos Garcia-Rodriguez captured in Louisiana
HOUSTON (CBSNewsTexas.com) - Pasadena police say the suspect wanted for sexually assaulting and killing an 11-year-old girl in her Houston area apartment is in custody, and will be charged with murder.
Friday, Pasadena police announced that Juan Carlos Garcia-Rodriguez, 18, was a person of interest in Maria Gonzalez's killing.
According to PPD, Garcia-Rodriguez was staying in the same apartment complex as Maria Gonzalez. Pasadena Police Chief Josh Bruegger said in a news conference a key found in the victim's apartment was a key piece of evidence.
"Investigators, after processing the key found out it did not fit the victim's apartment," the report said. "So, they started checking other apartments and found another apartment that it opened in the apartment complex."
Garcia-Rodriguez had been staying in that apartment. Bruegger said investigators also found additional evidence linking the 18-year-old to Maria Gonzalez's death.
Investigators interviewed and collected DNA from Garcia-Rodriguez the day Maria Gonzalez's body was found; however, Bruegger said he wasn't on their radar at the time.
By Saturday, Garcia-Rodriguez was found in Shreveport and taken into custody, where he remains waiting for extradition.
Police said Maria Gonzalez was home alone last Saturday morning when someone knocked at the door. The girl texted her father, Carmelo Gonzalez, who had just gone to work. According to the AP, Carmelo Gonzalez told his daughter not to answer the door. Maria Gonzalez said she wouldn't and would stay in her bed. But she didn't answer his subsequent calls.
Carmelo Gonzalez asked his brother and sister-in-law, who live in the same apartment complex, to check on his daughter, police said Tuesday. They found the front door unlocked and things out of place when they went inside, but they did not find her, according to the AP.
When Carmelo Gonzalez returned home, he searched the apartment and found his daughter underneath her bed, wrapped in a trash bag and placed inside a laundry basket. Police said the girl had been strangled to death and sexually assaulted.
