A Connecticut man wanted for murder in the fatal shooting of a 20-year-old mother of two and her 4-month-old son was captured in Puerto Rico on Saturday.
The U.S. Marshals Violent Fugitive Task Force located 23-year-old Lance “Macho” Morales at a home in the barrio of Fajardo in eastern Puerto Rico, according to Hartford police.
The Waterbury resident was taken into custody and formally charged as a fugitive from justice. He’s being held on a $3 million bond while awaiting extradition to Connecticut, where he’s expected to face murder and other charges, according to WVIT.
The arrest comes three days after authorities identified Morales as a suspect in the deadly drive-by shooting near Hartford’s Thomas J. Hyland Memorial Park on Tuesday afternoon.
Jessiah Mercado and baby Messiah Diaz were sitting inside a car with two other people on New Britain Avenue when another driver pulled up alongside them and began shooting, police said.
The mother and son, from Springfield, Mass., were struck by the gunfire and died at Hartford Hospital a short time later.
Another passenger in the vehicle, identified only as a man in his 20s, was treated for non-life-threatening injuries, while the driver of their car was unharmed. Police said the driver was responsible for rushing all of the victims to the hospital.
The grisly violence prompted an intense manhunt for the gunman, who fled the scene in a white Infiniti Q70. The vehicle was found abandoned in Waterbury on Thursday, the same day authorities issued a warrant for Morales’ arrest, charging him with two counts of murder, murder with special circumstances, criminal possession of a firearm, first-degree assault and first-degree criminal attempt to commit assault.
While an investigation into the shooting is ongoing, Hartford police previously said they believed it was targeted and sparked by an argument over a car. No other details were released.
A GoFundMe set up to raise money for funeral services described Jessiah Mercado as “one of the strongest young women who did not always have life so easy [but] put her heart into everything she set out to do.”
She leaves behind an older son, according to her family.
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