A nearly five-year manhunt has ended with a Dallas murder suspect back in North Texas after U.S. Marshals tracked him to Mexico, where authorities say he had been hiding since a deadly catalytic converter theft in 2021.
FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth reporter Shaun Rabb reported that 22-year-old Juvencio Solorzano was arrested in Mexico with help from federal law enforcement partners and Mexican authorities, then extradited back to Dallas and booked into the Dallas County jail on a capital murder charge.
Police say Solorzano shot and killed 22-year-old Sergio Maas after Maas realized people were around his Toyota SUV in the parking lot of his apartment complex.
A Noise In The Parking Lot
Rabb reported that the killing happened on December 1, 2021, at the Spanish Village apartments in the 3200 block of Sumter Drive.
According to an arrest affidavit described in the report, Maas was inside his third-floor apartment with a witness when he heard a strange noise coming from the parking lot.
He looked outside and saw people near his Toyota Sequoia.
Maas grabbed his keys, walked onto the balcony and activated the vehicle’s alarm.
The witness told investigators that she then heard someone yell, “die dog,” followed by what sounded like three to five gunshots.
Maas was hit multiple times, fell back into the apartment and died at the scene.
Investigators later determined that the group had removed the catalytic converter from his SUV.
The detail that makes the case especially grim is how quickly a property crime turned deadly. Maas did not go into the parking lot or physically confront the group, according to the report; he simply activated his vehicle alarm from a third-floor balcony.
Police Identify Solorzano As The Shooter
Dallas police eventually identified Solorzano as the person accused of firing the fatal shots.
Rabb reported that another suspect, Isabel Campbell, was also developed as part of the investigation.
Police said Campbell had been with Solorzano during the attempted theft.
An arrest affidavit cited in the report revealed that Campbell later messaged Solorzano after seeing social media posts about the shooting.
“WTF,” she wrote, according to the affidavit. “I hope that wasn’t us.”
The message continued with, “bruh, OMG, I think it is.”
Campbell was arrested in 2022, later pleaded guilty to murder and is now serving a 10-year prison sentence.
Solorzano, however, left the country.
That split in the case is what turned a homicide investigation into a long-term fugitive hunt. One suspect was already in custody, while the person accused of pulling the trigger had vanished across an international border.
Fugitive Task Force Takes Over
Acting U.S. Marshal Sean Malecha, with the Northern District of Texas, told FOX 4 that the Dallas Police Department had already built the murder case and secured the capital murder charge before asking the North Texas Fugitive Task Force for help.
“The Dallas Police Department did a great job of investigating the homicide portion of it, getting that capital murder charge,” Malecha said.
From there, the task force began the slow work of figuring out where Solorzano had gone.
Malecha said investigators spent extensive time on surveillance, interviews and data analysis.
“It took a lot of man hours, a lot of investigation into this matter,” he told Rabb.
Several investigators worked the case across long hours, including Dallas police officers assigned to the fugitive task force.
Eventually, those efforts led investigators to conclude that Solorzano was in Mexico.
The case shows how different fugitive investigations can look from the initial crime itself. There may be no dramatic breakthrough for years, just small pieces of information collected through interviews, digital records and surveillance until enough of them point in the same direction.
Arrested In Mexico Without Confrontation
Once investigators confirmed Solorzano’s location, the U.S. Marshals Service worked with Mexican authorities to track him down.
Malecha said the Marshals Service has personnel based in Mexico City along with other offices throughout the country, allowing U.S. investigators to work closely with Mexican officials on fugitive cases.
“We have a really good relationship with the Republic of Mexico, their government, in locating and apprehending dangerous fugitives that are wanted in the United States,” Malecha said.
Authorities ultimately took Solorzano into custody without a confrontation.
Rabb reported that he was handcuffed on Monday and returned to Dallas by Wednesday.
He is now being held in the Dallas County jail.
For investigators who had been following the case since 2021, the arrest marked the end of a search that never truly stopped.
More Than 15 Previous Arrests
Rabb also noted that Solorzano was already familiar to the Dallas County criminal justice system.
He had more than 15 prior arrests in Dallas County dating back to 2019, according to the report.
FOX 4 showed a series of booking photographs while discussing his previous contacts with law enforcement.
That history does not determine guilt in the current capital murder case, but it adds context to how often Solorzano had already moved through the local justice system before the 2021 killing.
The current charge is far more serious.
A capital murder accusation tied to a killing during an alleged theft carries consequences well beyond the lower-level cases that may have appeared in earlier arrest records.
A Five-Year Search Comes To An End
The long search for Solorzano finally ended through cooperation between Dallas police, the U.S. Marshals Service and Mexican authorities.
Malecha credited that relationship with making the arrest possible.
He also said the North Texas Fugitive Task Force benefits from having officers from multiple agencies working together, particularly when a suspect leaves the area or the country.
For Maas’ family, the arrest cannot undo what happened in the parking lot in 2021.
But it does mean that the man police accuse of firing the fatal shots is now back in Dallas and facing the charge that investigators obtained years ago.
The crime itself was over in seconds: a catalytic converter theft, a car alarm, several gunshots.
The effort to bring the accused shooter back took almost five years.
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