http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_2786099

Relatives in Mexico led fugitive into cops' trap
U.S. and Mexican officials were just steps behind the 20-year-old suspected of killing a Denver detective
By Sean Kelly and Greg Griffin
Denver Post Staff Writers

Doña Alicia looks out the door of the small corner store she owns in Culiacán, Mexico. On Saturday evening, suspected cop-killer Raul Garcia-Gomez was brought to the store by his grandmother, who had arranged with police to have her grandson arrested there. It was over in a few seconds. I was looking the other way, and I didn t even see it happen, Alicia said Monday. (Post / RJ Sangosti)

Culiacán, Mexico - In the end, Raul Garcia-Gomez's grandmother lured him to a tiny corner grocery store and into the hands of waiting federal officials.

It was the culmination of an odyssey across Mexico in which Garcia-Gomez, accused of killing a Denver detective, stayed just a step ahead of U.S. marshals and Mexican authorities.

The relatives in this large city near Mexico's west coast embraced the 20-year-old Garcia- Gomez, welcoming him into their homes. He told family members that he had traveled to Mexico on vacation to visit them, many of whom he had never met before.

But after authorities began questioning family members in other cities, his relatives in Culiacán became concerned. They met with authorities at a hotel Saturday afternoon. By Saturday night, he was in custody.

"I love him very much, and it hurts me very much what happened," his aunt Veronica Perez Castañeda said Monday from her home in Culiacán.

Still, relatives decided turning him over was the right thing to do.

"I wondered, 'Why are the police looking for him?' I knew it was wrong to keep him from the police," his uncle Jose Luis Flores Bueno said.

Garcia-Gomez's capture ended an intense effort by U.S. and Mexican authorities, particularly the Agencia Federal de Investigacion, Mexico's version of the FBI, said Joe Chavarria, an inspector with the U.S. marshals' regional fugitive task force based in Los Angeles.

"We all took it personally," Chavarria said. "The officer had a family. We had the family in mind all the time."

Family members in Mexico and U.S. authorities on Monday described how Garcia-Gomez ran from Denver, made his way to Los Angeles and then bounced around Mexico before his eventual capture.

It was a journey that lasted 27 days.

About 1 a.m. on May 8, police say, Garcia-Gomez fired the shots that killed Denver police Detective Donald "Donnie" Young and wounded Detective John "Jack" Bishop. The two were working off-duty at a baptismal party at the Salon Ocampo social hall, 1733 W. Mississippi Ave.

Two policemen nearby, Lt. Michael Calo and Officer Alex Golston, were working across the street and heard gunfire.

Two hours later, at 3 a.m., Garcia-Gomez and a friend buried two handgun magazines and a box of ammunition in the backyard of the Denver home he shared with his girlfriend and her family, according to a search-warrant affidavit.

The affidavit says Jaime Arana-Del Angel, the friend, admitted he dug the hole in the backyard. He has been charged as an accessory to the crime.

Leopoldo Rivas, father of Garcia-Gomez's girlfriend, said police have not yet appeared to search for the gun. While the yard does have an area cleared of grass, Rivas said it is for a small garden to grow chile plants and herbs.

Arana-Del Angel also lived with the Rivas family, moving with them from Los Angeles last year.

Rivas said he was quiet, worked in roofing and was like part of their family. The family last saw him when police took him for questioning on Memorial Day. Rivas wondered where he was until he called the house Sunday to tell them he was in custody.

"I don't know what to believe," Rivas said Monday.

His daughter, Sandra Rivas, 18, said she
hasn't talked to Garcia- Gomez since he left Denver.

"It was good to know that he is OK," she said Monday.

Rivas said she still misses her boyfriend and the father of her baby, who is 6 weeks old. But she has resolved to move forward and create a new life for her daughter.

"I'm feeling OK, just taking care of my baby. My mother and my sister help me a lot," she said.

She says she isn't sure what happened the night of the shooting.

What is known is that several hours after the 1 a.m. shooting, Garcia-Gomez clocked in at his dishwashing job. After work, authorities said, he headed west.

An anonymous caller told police that a man named Raul had attended the baptism party and "became upset when he was confronted by the security guard/ police officer," according to the search-warrant affidavit, obtained Monday by 9News.

Then, according to U.S. marshals, other investigators, family members and the affidavit:

Garcia-Gomez drove first to Las Vegas. There, investigators believe his father met him and accompanied him to Los Angeles. He spent only a day or two in L.A.

On May 11, another relative drove Garcia-Gomez to Tijuana. He may have boarded a plane to Zacatecas, Mexico.

From Zacatecas, he took a bus to a village, just outside Santiago Papasquiaro, in the Mexican state of Durango. He was there four days, playing soccer and staying with relatives.

"He wasn't hiding in a closet," Chavarria said.

Garcia-Gomez felt insulated for a time in the village of Francisco Javier Leyva, populated mostly by relatives on his mother's side.

But soon he was feeling the heat. Many people in the village had relatives in the United States. They heard the story of the shooting in Denver. They heard Garcia-Gomez was a wanted man.
"We didn't let him settle in," Chavarria said. "He couldn't get a job. He didn't have money. He was just getting handouts."

Chavarria, who spent three weeks in Mexico tracking Garcia-Gomez with the help of Mexican authorities, said Garcia-Gomez's mother's family members in the village knew he was in trouble. They told different stories, which slowed the investigation.

Authorities missed him in the village by only a day or so.

"We got a lot of misinformation," Chavarria said.

As investigators got steadily closer, Garcia-Gomez went with his paternal grandmother to Sinaloa, a state on Mexico's western coast. He stayed with her for about a week in the small village of Oso Viejo about 30 miles outside Culiacán, a sprawling city of nearly 1 million known for ranching, farming and a violent drug trade.

He then moved to Culiacán to stay with his father's sister, Perez Castañeda.

"We thought he was on vacation. We never had any doubts," said Flores Bueno, Perez Castañeda's husband. "When he arrived, he said he wanted to visit his aunt and get to know her."

Garcia-Gomez stayed with his aunt and her family for about 10 days in their meager but tidy three-room house in a lower-middle-class neighborhood near downtown Culiacán. He stayed in the house most of the time but left now and then to pick up tortillas or refreshments for the family, Perez Castañeda said.

"He seemed like a very good person. He had no vices. He was very tranquil," she said of Garcia-Gomez, whom she had not met before he came to stay.

Garcia-Gomez - with his shaved head and tattoos - didn't fit in with the locals, who favor cowboy hats and pickup trucks, Chavarria said.

"He looked exactly like his picture," Chavarria said, "except more tattoos."

The family began to wonder about Garcia-Gomez's story late last week, when police had contact with other relatives. According to Flores Bueno, police inquired about Garcia-Gomez's whereabouts but did not say why they were looking for him. At least one relative told them he didn't know Garcia-Gomez, he said.

Finally, after meeting in Oso Viejo on Saturday morning, family members decided to contact the police. They met with three officers that afternoon at a hotel in Culiacán, where they learned he was wanted for in the killing of a police officer in Denver.

About 6 p.m. that evening, Garcia-Gomez and his grandmother Florencia Castañeda Rodriguez walked several blocks to a tiny corner store. There, Garcia-Gomez watched neighborhood boys playing video games for about 10 minutes.

The store owner, a woman known in the neighborhood as Dona Alicia, said it was a normal night, with a dozen kids playing on the corner. Suddenly, a man in the store confronted Garcia-Gomez and several others moved in to help with the arrest.

"It was over in a few seconds. I was looking the other way, and I didn't even see it happen," she said.

Garcia-Gomez put up no fight, had no weapons and was down to his last 20 pesos, less than $2.

"He had tears in his eyes. He wasn't expecting to be caught, at least not that quick," Chavarria said. "It was the end of the road for running."