Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011

3-feet, 11-inch tall man suspected in Silver Spring murder arrested in El Salvador

by Jeremy Arias | Staff Writer

Montgomery County murder suspect Henry Chavez arrived back in the United States this morning and is awaiting extradition from Harris County, Texas, back to Maryland, according to U.S. Marshals Service and county police. Chavez was arrested in El Salvador Tuesday.

Chavez, 29, has been on the run since Montgomery County Police first issued a warrant for his arrest on May 28, 2010, after he was connected to the May 27 shooting death of Silver Spring resident Hamilton Luis Rabanales Orozco, 25, police said. County police officials continued to work the case through their membership in the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force, a local branch of the U.S. Marshals Service, according to Bill Sorukas, chief inspector for the service's International Investigations Branch.

Chavez is currently wanted in Montgomery County on one count each of first-degree murder and the felony use of a handgun in the commission of a violent crime. It is a warrant, so there are no attorneys yet named in online records.

Chavez is expected to return to Montgomery County within the month, said county police spokeswoman Lucille Baur, who could not provide details as to when Chavez may arrive.

"We typically don't say specifically when someone is being transported back into the county for a crime for everybody's safety," she said. "You don't know what kind of associates this individual might have that might try to free him from custody."

It is still unclear how police developed Chavez as a suspect in the homicide, which occurred at about 8:30 p.m. May 27 when county police were dispatched to the scene of a shooting near Georgia and Dexter avenues in Silver Spring and found Orozco, of the 2100 block of Dexter Avenue, suffering from injuries, according to police.

Orozco died in a county hospital within an hour, police said.

Baur declined to comment when pressed for information on how Chavez—known to frequent the Silver Spring and Wheaton areas—was tied to the crime. The only link police initially had linking Chavez to the death was Chavez' unusual height: He stands only 3-feet, 11-inches tall and weighs just 85 pounds.

"That's how he was partially developed as a suspect, but it would not be appropriate for the detectives to talk about further details before this case moves forward," Baur said, adding that detectives have yet to interview Chavez.

"He was never taken into custody here, he was developed as a suspect, detectives were searching for him, but his arrest in El Salvador was the first time he was arrested," she said.

The Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force learned that Chavez was likely in El Salvador through the course of its investigation, Sorukas said. He added that, from there, federal immigration and law enforcement agencies began working with Salvadoran counterparts to bring about Chavez' arrest.

"Based on his charges in the United States, [Chavez] was decided to be an undesirable person in El Salvador, and generally when El Salvador gets rid of that undesirable person, the normal process is to deport that person back their country of origin, in this case, the United States," Sorukas said.

Sorukas went on to explain that, because Chavez was a U.S. citizen, U.S. Marshals Service were able to use the assistance of the U.S. Department of State in order to have him deported instead of extradited.

Extraditions occur when a non-U.S. citizen needs to be escorted back to the United States to face charges for a crime committed here, and they are quite complicated and can take several years to complete, Sorukas said.

Because he was deported and not extradited, Chavez was arrested and charged the moment he landed in Houston Thursday by officials from the Gulf Coast Violent Offender Task Force, another wing of the U.S. Marshals Service and a regional partner with the capital area task force, Sorukas said.

jarias@gazette.net

http://www.gazette.net/stories/02102011 ... _32552.php