Hillsborough sheriff gives update on arrest of accused killer

I stood in this very spot late last night and made a commitment to this community that there was nowhere that this murderer would be able to hide that we wouldn't find him I now stand here less than 24 hours later and tell you that this murderer this murderer who brutally murdered and committed this heinous vile an unthinkable crime against these two innocent victims is under arrest let me talk a little bit now about how we got here how do we get to this point I have to tell you me as the sheriff and me as someone in this community like all of you we shouldn't be more proud of the men and women that are the Hillsburg County Sheriff's Office and what they've accomplished here in the last 24 hours they were determined and they never gave up and what you're what I'm announcing here now is is as a result of their efforts last night we knew that our uh this murderer had about a three- hour almost a three-hour Head Start start on us and he had fled on foot so we immediately set up a perimeter a perimeter almost two and a half to three miles wide because we knew he had this type of Head Start overnight deputies detectives our can9 units and our aviators in the the sky never gave up I was here till early in the morning and it was incredible to watch how this teamwork uh came together this collaborative effort from all the teams here in the office from the technology using that infrared camera and looking at heat signatures watching the different canine units and they would work as a team how one dog would get tired and they'd bring another one out and keep the search going from the blood hounds tremendous asset and resource all the way to our apprehensive canines they never gave up at one point we got extremely excited after we gave an update last night because we found a bloody shirt that we are confident was his so we all got excited we're like we're going to wrap this up then uh at times throughout the night we continued to get extremely excited because the dogs would pick up on a scent then they would lose a scent this morning now it was time to go into phase two of this perimeter search we wanted to close the perimeter in hold the perimeter but start closing it in and do more of a finite grid search so we called out even more deputies and detectives to do that part of that was some uh a contingency of undercover detectives that are in undercover cars where they could go in and get a look without being seen as a law enforcement officer during this uh finite search one of our gang detectives our undercover detectives sees a Hispanic male that possibly could be our suspect could be this person who committed this murder wearing a heavy heavy jacket uh almost like a Parker jacket so he sees this Hispanic male walking out of what is almost like an abandoned Barn a barn abandoned uh House housing area so he calls it out I have to talk up second about the professionalism not only of every Deputy that was out here but of this detective when he showed the kind of restraint we're taught when you see a bad guy you run after the bad guy but he used such great restraint because he knew that if he couldn't capture this murderer before he got into this heavily dense Shrubbery and wooded area that he would make it worse he would Tain the scent of these canines so a lot of deputies out here overnight use great discipline by staying in their cars not to not to tank Descent of the different deputies either either dog throughout the evening so he at some point our suspect realizes that he's probably law enforcement officer sees him looking through the binoculars and I think figures out the gig is up so he runs he refuses commands to stop and he does just what we were afraid he was does that he would do and he runs into a heavily wooded and dense area with a lot of overgrown vegetation when I say overgrown you can't see maybe six inches of foot into it nonetheless try to navigate into it where he is well he might have been able to outrun the vision visual sight of the deputies these hard charging deputies that were out here but he couldn't outrun the scent of this Kine and the K9 took us right to it and I'm going to release the the the body cam footage because it's so amazing and well you can see and it paints a better picture of what these deputies actually had to go through to apprehend this suspect as they're trying to peel the layers back and could barely see them as they're con constantly giving commands to surrender to surrender to surrender they give one final command if if you don't surrender I'm going to releasee the dog the dog goes in and does what he's trained to do either grab by the by the leg or the arm and try to bring him out to the safety where the deputies can place him under arrest um during that as as the as the um canine is grabbing the jacket he's able to slip out of the jacket by that time more detectives were on scene and they begin to help these two can9 officers that were that were trying to apprehend this this subject they pull him into a a a um an area that's not as densely populated when I talk about the vegetation um they continue to give him arrest commands he is non-compliant the entire time the body cam footage still shows the great Restraint of our deputies they finally are able to place him under arrest now comes the time this murderer will now face the full weight of the criminal justice system for this heinous and vile murders that he committed against these two innocent victims he has now been taken back to our investigative area where we'll attempt to do an interview I called right before I came up here nothing yet uh we have some Spanish speakers uh getting ready to discuss with him we asked him if he was bit all he said is that in the back of his area his head area he thought he was bit we didn't see any marks uh we didn't see any other other marks on him I think the K9 got more of the jacket uh than actually him so um our crime scene is just finishing up here I told you again last night this was a this was a a a gruesome scene we do know now last night was so gruesome I stood here and said that they were brutally beaten to death it was that gruesome we now know that uh he stabbed these two victims we know that he was romantically involved not married with uh with our our victim who was 3 7 years of age and our 5-year-old victim that uh he also stabbed violently both of them very violently um he has no connection with with that 5-year-old we thought last night that that that was his daughter we've learned that that's not the case that uh his her father this uh young child's father is still in Guatemala what questions can I attempt to answer yes sir yeah great question uh we're still working through that our main concern was to identify him and find out how he entered our country we learned with uh working with our partners at Homeland Security he did enter this country unlawfully um now we will continue to work to find out did his girlfriend uh for lack of a better term and her daughter uh come in here and enter in this country unlawfully as well we're working through that uh at this time yeah the child's not his we did confirm that uh the father's still in Guatemala uh but uh the relationship we know at this time they were not married they are romantically involved that's the extent of the information that we have at this time another great question we set up the perimeter about 2 and a half miles three miles away knowing he had such a head start on us even on foot he was located over here and we'll release the exact location uh just about 2.3 miles from from right here so again when I talk about we should all be proud of the incredible passion and and dedicated efforts of the sheriff's office they did a phenomenal job of making sure they set up a perimeter and their efforts kept him there was nowhere for him to go and by constantly working this consistently as we did throughout the evening there was nowhere for him to go he couldn't get up and go anywhere there wasn't a square inch of this 2 and a half mile almost three mile uh circumference that we didn't have uh covered only thing had on him was a little bit of cash and his cell phone that was the only thing on him not that we're aware of um some people that we spoke to said that he did reach out to them and fortunate for us every time uh he called somebody to ask for help they told him absolutely not not getting involved so we do know at this time he did make some because as we're going through looking at his contact where he worked his boss his brother who lives here different friends we spoke to them we were able to track them down uh down throughout the throughout the night and overnight and during that time they all admitted that he had called um asking for help and they all declined that offer and denied that help and said you're not getting El involved so great job by this community luckily because of those uh uh those efforts we're not sitting here announcing that someone else has gone the jail for harboring a fugitive don't know we don't know all we know is that around around s months ago and we're still working on uh we don't know the exact date because they entered the country unlawfully we do know from talking to some neighbors in some interviews that we believe about seven months ago to three of them unlawfully entered entered the country correct no and and again I'm I'm nothing's confirmed 100% let me just preface that but we believe the talking to different people there's different accounts that they've been in this area the whole time for the last seven months since they entered the country I don't know and I'm sorry I if if we do I'll certainly get that out to you I don't I don't know that we do know he was working don't know where we haven't uh we have no calls for service at this mobile home where they shared with uh shared the home with some other individuals that rented some some rooms in the home too we have no calls for service out here thank you everyone stay safe thank you for doing that

Channel: 10 Tampa Bay

Views: 65,591

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Id: H0L8YybaOWE

Length: 11min 51sec (711 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2024