(USNewsMag.com) – An illegal immigrant suspected of murdering a mother of five last year in Maryland has been arrested in Oklahoma after DNA from another crime in California identified him.
Twenty-three-year-old Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez was arrested in Tulsa on Friday, June 14, and subsequently booked on Saturday morning, June 15. The suspect is being charged with the murder of Rachel Morin, who was killed while running a trail near her residence in Bel Air, Maryland. The quiet town was considered by most residents to be a safe place, according to Morin’s boyfriend, Richard Tobin. The murder shocked the entire community and has heightened concern across the nation about the southern border crisis of illegal immigration.
On August 5, 2023, the 37-year-old mother of five went out for a run and never returned. Her body was discovered the following day and evidence indicated she was dragged by her killer off the trail, raped, and then murdered.
A manhunt ensued, and sketches of Martinez-Hernandez were released in February based on video footage and his DNA was discovered in California related to a home invasion investigation and matched the DNA found on Morin’s body in Maryland. Law enforcement eventually caught up with the culprit, who investigators found entered the US illegally last year in March. Martinez-Hernandez was allegedly fleeing from El Salvador where he murdered a woman a few months prior, in January 2023.
According to the Harford County Sheriff’s Office, they met with the mother of the victim about five hours before carrying out the arrest, during which Tulsa police cooperated with federal partners to locate Martinez-Hernandez and take him into custody.
Sheriff Jeffery Gahler became emotional when he spoke about the case, claiming that the killer was “emboldened by his anonymity” in the country and noting that he “brutally attacked” a mother and nine-year-old daughter in Los Angeles, which linked Martinez-Hernandez to Morin’s case in Maryland.
The sheriff also criticized President Joe Biden, whose failure to secure the southern border has come under increased scrutiny with each new murder by an illegal alien. Gahler said that “American citizens are not safe” due to Biden’s “failed immigration policies.”
Morin’s case mirrored that of Lankin Riley, a medical student in Georgia who was murdered while out for a jog.
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