A man who shot and killed the mother of his then 2-year-old child in front of their South Los Angeles home in 2017 has been arrested in Mexico, the FBI announced Saturday.
Officials in Mexico detained Andres Zambrano, a 30-year-old Compton-born man, while he was eating at a restaurant in the Colima area on Friday, according to U.S. officials.
Zambrano had been wanted for the killing of his partner on March 16, 2017 in the 11600 block of Towne Avenue in the Green Meadows neighborhood.
LAPD officers at the time described the victim as Zambrano’s wife, who they said was shot on the sidewalk and pronounced dead at a hospital. On Sunday, the agency identified the victim as 23-year-old Emma Rodriguez-Estrada.
Zambrano drove off after the incident, police said.
He was charged with murder in the Superior Court of California in L.A. County and a warrant was issued for his arrest four days after the shooting, the FBI said.
Zambrano had stated that he would flee to Mexico or Chicago, where the known gang member and convicted felon had ties, according to a wanted poster by the FBI. The bureau listed him as one of its “ten most wanted fugitives.”
Detectives asked federal officials for assistance in locating him and worked with Mexican authorities to learn of his whereabouts, leading to the man’s arrest.
Zambrano was deported from Mexico and returned to L.A. Saturday evening, according to the FBI.
He was booked into jail to await prosecution by the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office, the FBI said. His bail was set $2,050,000 million, county inmate records show.
