A man has been arrested after a 19-year-old woman was kidnapped from a park in Southern California and later found dead in a vegetation field.
Police arrested Gabriel Esparza, 20, on Monday afternoon after linking him to the kidnapping of Andrea Vasquez at a park in the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier on Sunday, the Whittier Police Department said in a statement on Facebook.
Vazquez was at the park with a man when a shooter approached their car and fired, the man told police. The man ran away during the shooting and when he returned, Vazquez was gone and there was blood near his car, police say.
Police said that it appears that Vazquez and the man were “randomly targeted” by the shooter.
Police say Esparza was booked on charges of murder and kidnapping. The case was forwarded to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, which ultimately will determine whether to charge Esparza.
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The district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to messages about whether Esparza has been charged.
It’s unclear whether Esparza has an attorney.
Police found Andrea Vazquez dead in a vegetation field
Esparza was arrested while he was working in the Los Angeles suburb of Lakewood, police said. He is being held without bail.
Police found Vazquez’s body late Monday in a vegetation field in Moreno Valley, about 50 miles from the park where the shooting happened.
Officer Tommy Mattsson, a Whittier police spokesman, declined to say what led police to Esparza or what connected him to the shooting, but told USA TODAY that “detectives pursued several leads during the course of the non-stop investigation, which ultimately led them to arrest the suspect and identify the area of Moreno valley where the body was left.”
Police said they they recovered the gun believed to have been used in the shooting in Esparza’s truck.
