NORFOLK, Va. — Video obtained by 13News Now shows a heavily armed law enforcement presence near the Campostella neighborhood of Norfolk in July, which search warrants connect to an arrest of a murder suspect from New Jersey involving the U.S. Marshals Service.
This July, prosecutors in Mercer County, New Jersey announced the arrest of a 15-year-old teenager in the shooting death of 47-year-old Luis Torres Marrero.
According to a criminal affidavit from late July, a search warrant reveals that Torres Marrero died on July 14 after a days long hospital stay, suffering from a gunshot wound to his head.
Earlier surveillance footage showed an unidentified person wearing a mask and sweatshirt circling Torres Marrero, seated outside a liquor store, for three minutes on a bicycle. Simultaneously as the suspect leaves the area, surveillance footage picks up the sound of a single gunshot.
The investigation later connected the suspect to a 15-year-old student of Achievers Early College Prep charter school.
By July 18, the 15-year-old was charged with first-degree murder and two weapons charges connected to the crime.
The Norfolk Police Fugitive Task Force, in coordination with the U.S. Marshals Service, took the 15-year-old into custody near the Campostella and Campostella Heights neighborhoods.
"When they found out he was in Norfolk, they sent us a collateral lead to go arrest him so they didn't have to travel all the way down here to do it," Robert Bowers Jr. said, Senior Inspector for the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force.
Bowers told 13News Now that the Norfolk-Newport News team of the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force have helped apprehend more than 80 fugitive suspects in Hampton Roads this year alone.
"A police department may not have a whole group put together to have the man power to concentrate on fugitive cases, they may investigate the case and then they have to move to another case, and the fugitive case moves by the wayside, so the warrant may be floating out on the person for awhile. The U.S. Marshals Service concentrates on those cases from a fugitive standpoint," Bowers said.