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Officials nab illegal alien with murder conviction(The Sun (Yuma, AZ)(KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) May 5--A man Wellton police found wandering around on the railroad tracks near Wellton turned out to be a convicted murderer and Mexican illegal alien who had made his way back into the U.S. after having been deported last year, according to Border Patrol spokesman Rick Hays. Early Thursday morning, Wellton police saw Gerardo Lopez-Rios walking on the railroad tracks near town, according to Hays. The police called Border Patrol, who determined that Lopez-Rios was a Mexican national in the United States illegally. Wellton agents took Lopez-Rios to the Wellton Border Patrol Station, where they ran his fingerprints through the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), as is routine for all illegal immigrants apprehended by the patrol. "We found out -- whoa -- we've got a convicted murderer on our hands here," Hays said. The fingerprint scan revealed that Lopez had been arrested in March 1997 in Minneapolis, Minn., and convicted later that year of second-degree murder. He had been sentenced to 11 years and 10 months in jail, according to Hays. Lopez-Rios was released eight years later and deported to Mexico last year. After he was caught Thursday, he was charged with felony re-entry after deportation, as an aggravated felon. Hays said the case was an example of how local and federal agencies are working together to root out criminals in the U.S. "Within five to seven minutes, we were able to identify a threat to society," he said, referring to the time it takes to run a suspect's fingerprints through Border Patrol's database. Since its inception, IAFIS has identified 226,204 people who have been arrested and charged with crimes, Hays said. |