The main suspect in the murder of a Maryland woman last year is an undocumented immigrant who had been deported at least three times before allegedly committing the crime, an ICE official said.
The person in question is Víctor Antonio Martínez-Hernández. He was arrested last week in Oklahoma and sent to Maryland to stand trial on murder charges, ABC News reported.
"On June 14, officers from the Tulsa, Oklahoma, police department and agents from the FBI arrested Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, a 23-year-old unlawfully present Salvadoran national wanted by authorities in Harford County, Maryland, for the Aug. 6, 2023, murder of Rachel Morin. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lodged an immigration detainer against Martinez-Hernandez with the Tulsa County Jail June 15, 2024," ICE Spokesperson James Covington said in a statement.
The suspect is from El Salvador and last entered the U.S. through New Mexico in January last year. He was expelled in the same month of 2024 in Texas and again less than a week later under the Title 42 authority. Martínez-Hernández is now in the Harford County Jail awaiting trial.
Rachel Morin, 37, was found on a hiking trail on August 6, 2023, a day after her boyfriend reported her missing. The Salvadorian migrant was tracked down after a 10-month investigation that matched his DNA with the crime scene.
Investigators believe Martínez-Hernández attacked Moring while she was hiking, then dragged her through the woods and killed her.
The case has made national headlines following the apprehension and bears a resemblance with the murder of Georgia student Laken Riley in February. The main accused, Venezuelan Antonio Ibarra, was indicted in early May and faces 10 charges, among them felony murder, malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury and aggravated assault with intent to rape.
Prosecutors in the caseare looking for Ibarra to be sentenced to life without parole, which would rule out the death penalty.
Riley, a nursing student at the Augusta University College of Nursing, disappeared after going for a jog on February 22. She was later found dead as a result of "blunt force trauma," police said.
University Police Chief Jeff Clark said that it didn't look like Ibarra new Riley and that the killing was a "crime of opportunity where he saw an individual and bad things happened." According to the grand jury's indictment, Ibarra tried to rape Riley before "inflicting blunt-force trauma to her head and "asphyxiating her in a manner unknown to jurors."
Ibarra's status as an undocumented migrant was a salient factor in the case, with presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump using it to criticize president Joe Biden's border policies.
Moreover, state Republicans introduced shortly after a bill requiring, among other things, that all people taken to a jail in the state have their migratory status checked.
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