An 18-year-old Guatemalan migrant could face capital punishment if found guilty of the death of his 11-year-old next-door neighbor. Authorities believe the Pasadena, Texas, preteen was sexually assaulted and strangled by the neighbor, whom police say tried to deflect blame from himself by using a familiar racial trope: It was two Black guys.
Police say to hide the child’s body, the youth, whose name is Juan Carlos Garcia-Rodriguez and entered the country illegally in January, stuffed it in a hamper and hid it underneath her father’s bed.
Texas law enforcement arrested and charged Garcia-Rodriguez with the Aug. 12 death of Maria Gonzalez. He was hit with one count of capital murder of a person older than 10 and younger than 15. In Texas, this crime is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty.
Now booked as an adult, Garcia-Rodriguez is being held in custody at the Harris County jail.
He appeared in court for the first time on Aug. 24, and bond was denied.
The young victim was killed in her home at the Main Village apartments. An investigation determined that the refugee had just turned 18 and moved into the complex weeks before taking her life, Law & Crime reported.
After the girl was found dead Garcia-Rodriguez fled to Louisiana, where he was later captured.
After his arrest, Garcia-Rodriguez initially denied harming Gonzalez.
FOX 26 reports he told police that he was with friends during the time Maria would have been killed. However, that alibi did not check out. Later he told authorities that two Black men forced him to commit the attack — adding they had guns and threatened to kill him if he didn’t.
Court documents show that on the day of the murder, Gonzalez’s father saw the “long-haired neighbor” talking on the phone in a stairwell of the complex before he left for work.
Gonzalezes lived in unit 204 and Garcia-Rodriguez lived in unit 203. The apartments were six feet apart from each other and shared a stairwell.
Maria messaged her father on the WhatsApp messaging app around 10:02 a.m. and said someone was knocking on the door.
The dad sent someone to the house to check on the child but did not receive a report of concern. However, when he arrived home around 2:30 p.m., he discovered his daughter had been mushed in a black trash bag and dumped in a white laundry basket in his bedroom.
Police said her cause of death was determined to be “blunt force head and neck trauma and asphyxia due to strangulation.” Court documents also said Maria “had been sexually assaulted” during the attack.
The dad also discovered on the floor a strange silver key — one eventually linked to Garcia-Rodriguez — and shared it as evidence to authorities. He said the key did not belong to anyone in their home.
When officers asked around the complex, Garcia-Rodriguez’s roommates said the suspect was supposed to be moving out but had refused to return the key to those living in the apartment. As a result, the roommates changed the locks on him.
One roommate said, Garcia-Rodriguez “stated he had gotten a new job and was moving out and refused to return his apartment key.”
The key found at the Gonzalez residence matched the old lock for the 203 unit. The key, even before DNA evidence was gathered, helped authorities pin down the Guatemalan as a suspect.
Gonzalez is devastated by the loss of his daughter. He said in a statement he hopes the suspect is “burdened with the full weight of the law for what he has done to my daughter.”
