Suspect charged in Warwick robbery, rape

08:45 AM EDT on Saturday, June 14, 2008

By Amanda Milkovits

Journal Staff Writer

A Stop & Shop security camera shows Marco Riz entering the store on Quaker Lane in Warwick on Sunday. The police say he kidnapped a woman sitting in an SUV in the parking lot, drove to Providence and raped her.
Photo provided by Warwick police

Marco Riz had just been fired from his job as a cook at a Texas Roadhouse restaurant on Sunday, a Warwick police captain said, so he walked about a half-mile to the busy Stop & Shop supermarket on Route 2 that afternoon, went inside and changed his shirt.

When he came back out, he saw a Ford SUV idling close by the store, with a 30-year-old woman sitting in the passenger seat. The woman’s mother had just stopped into a nearby store to pick something up, said Warwick police Capt. Michael Babula. She didn’t expect to be more than 10 minutes.

In that moment, the police believe, Riz saw an opportunity. By the time the mother emerged from the store, the SUV was gone — and her daughter was in fear for her life.

Extra
Video: Surveillance cameras capture photos of suspect
Riz, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, is now in jail for kidnapping, robbery and rape after an intense multi-agency investigation tracked him down Thursday afternoon in Providence’s West End. He’s being detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a fugitive alien. ICE spokeswoman Paula Grenier said Riz had been ordered deported from the United States before, but she was unable to answer when the deportation order was issued or why.

Police detectives in Warwick and Providence are calling last Sunday’s attack “horrificâ€