Deported Man Returns to California, Sets Deadly House Fire with Mother and Children Inside Source
A law enforcement source says that a person who has been deported three times has been caught in California in connection with a house fire last month that killed a mother and two of her three children.
Stockton police said Friday morning that they had arrested 59-year-old Jose Carmen Cardona.
A person familiar with the case told Fox News Digital that the suspect has been sent back to the U.S. three times after being removed.
Three people were killed: 32-year-old Lisbeth Gutierrez-Salazar, her two boys, 10-year-old Juan Gutierrez-Salazar and 7-year-old Julian Cardona-Gutierrez. The only boy who got away was a third one whose name wasn’t given out right away.
Cardona is said to have set fire to their mobile home while they were all asleep inside.
Police said Cardona was seeing the mother, but he wasn’t the father of the kids.
Authorities say that after getting a warrant for his arrest on June 28, they called the U.S. Marshal Service for help and he ran away.
After a national search, he was caught on Friday in Modesto, which is about 30 miles from the crime scene.
Lasha Boyden, the U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of California, said that Cardona was put in jail at a bus stop without any problems.
Cardona is being charged with murder, attempted murder, and endangering a child. He is also being charged with multiple murder, arson, and torture, which makes him eligible for the death sentence.
Boyden told Cardona’s family how sorry she was and called him a “violent offender.”
Boyden told the press on Friday afternoon, “I hope that the capture of this violent offender will bring some sense of justice to you and your loved ones.” “This horrific act of violence was felt by all not just in the Central Valley but across our nation.”
In court on Monday, he will be charged.
For now, he is being held at the San Joaquin County Jail in French Camp, California, without bail.