A Southern California man who allegedly ambushed and killed his ex-girlfriend outside her new office building has been captured at the U.S.-Mexico border following a short-lived manhunt, police announced.
The suspect, 47-year-old Juan Marquez, is now locked up without bond at the Orange County Jail. He faces a murder charge for the May 14 shooting of Sandra Fernandez, 42, in Tustin, a city located just outside Anaheim.
The shooting went down right around 6:00 p.m. in an industrial area near Yorba Street and Medford Avenue. Fernandez, a mother of three, had just finished a training session at her new job and was walking out to her car when she was shot multiple times. Responding officers found her completely unresponsive on a curb, and paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene.
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People working nearby told investigators they saw a man dressed in head-to-toe black flee the scene on foot, jumping into an older-model, dark-colored sedan before speeding away.
Detectives soon identified Marquez as the prime suspect, stating that he essentially lay in wait near the building to ambush Fernandez as she left work. However, by the time police figured out who they were looking for, Marquez had already crossed the border into Mexico via the San Ysidro Port of Entry.
Local investigators managed to secure a formal murder warrant on May 16. The international flight didn’t last long, though; federal border agents spotted Marquez and arrested him the moment he tried to cross back into the United States.
The sudden killing completely blindsided Fernandez’s new colleagues. She had been on the job for less than four weeks, but coworkers said she was already a bright spot in the office.
“Even though it was just under a month, she already was making good relationships and having a great impact, so this is really a tragedy,” coworker Cassie Rossel said.
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Fernandez leaves behind an adult son who is currently away at college, along with two younger children, ages 14 and 5. Relatives started a GoFundMe page to support the kids, describing a household that has been completely leveled by the loss.
“No one deserves to leave their family, the way she went,” the family wrote on the fundraising page. “Words won’t describe what our family is feeling and going through right now.”
As of May 18, the Tustin Police Department and local prosecutors have not scheduled Marquez’s initial court appearance, and the investigation remains wide open. Detectives have not released a specific motive for the shooting, nor have they said how long the couple had been broken up or if Fernandez had ever filed any domestic threats or police reports against Marquez in the past.
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