Baja California state prosecutors arrested three men for the June 10 shooting death of a 71-year-old American woman outside her home in Tijuana’s Colonia El Rubí neighborhood. The suspects, identified by first names as Yonathan, Elian Alexander, and Isaac Daniel, face criminal proceedings after being presented before a control judge.
The victim, identified as María de Jesús, was sitting in her car preparing to leave on a trip with her husband when the attack occurred. According to the Fiscalía General del Estado (FGE), the state attorney general’s office, the three men arrived in a white sedan. One of them exited the vehicle and shot her multiple times.
C5 Surveillance Cameras Tracked Suspects’ Escape
Investigators used Tijuana’s C5 surveillance camera network to trace the suspects’ escape route from the Colonia El Rubí neighborhood. The C5 system, a citywide network of security cameras monitored in real time, allowed authorities to identify the white sedan and ultimately locate all three men.
During a search connected to the arrests, officers recovered two firearms: a .223-caliber rifle loaded with 26 rounds and a 7.62×39-caliber rifle with 20 rounds. Both weapons were seized as evidence.
Inheritance Dispute at Center of Investigation
The FGE’s primary line of investigation points to a dispute over the victim’s inheritance as the motive for the killing. Prosecutors have not disclosed whether the three suspects were related to María de Jesús or how they were connected to the inheritance in question.
Colonia El Rubí sits in Tijuana’s eastern zone, a residential area where many families have roots stretching back decades. Property and estate disputes in Mexico can become legally complex, particularly for binational families or U.S. citizens who own real estate in Baja California. Mexican inheritance law differs from U.S. law in several key ways, including the treatment of community property and the role of notaries in estate transfers.
All three suspects have been placed in custody and formally charged. Criminal proceedings are now underway before a control judge, the first step in Mexico’s oral adversarial court system introduced as part of the country’s 2016 judicial reforms.
This case was first reported by Punto Norte on June 17.