Photo credit: Credit: Chambers County Sheriffs Office

A Mexican citizen was extradited to Texas on Wednesday to face murder charges for the killing of two Baytown teens in 2015. The suspect fled from the U.S. more than two years ago.

The Chambers County Sheriff’s Office said that 23-year-old Brandon Alejandro Flores was taken into custody at Bush International Airport after the U.S. Marshals Service extradited him from Mexico. Flores is an unlicensed barber who is believed to have gang affiliations.

Sheriff Brian Hawthorne expressed his pleasure for the development. He said: “I am thrilled.” Authorities, however, entered an agreement to waive the death penalty in exchange for Flores’ extradition from Mexico.

It has been more than three years since the disappearance of then 18-year-old Alejandro Chavez and 17-year-old Jarvis Morgan after they visited Flores for a haircut.

It took deputies a month to find the teens’ bodies which were dumped in a secluded bayou near Anahuac, about 50 miles east of Houston. Authorities said the victims were shot execution-style and weighted down before they were thrown off a bridge.

Baytown police and the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office identified four suspects in the horrific double killing. The two other suspects, 20-year-old Jose Juan Chavez and 31-year-old Valentin Jose Lazo were both arrested in Baytown that same month.

Chambers District Attorney Cheryl Lieck said the two suspects did not fire the fatal shots but they were still instrumental in the commission of the crime. They also allegedly helped in disposing of the bodies. Both men are currently in jail. They have been indicted but still awaiting trial on capital murder charges.

Another suspect, 21-year-old Richard Gonzalez was also charged with capital murder. A grand jury, however, declined to indict him in May 2015.

Flores is the one accused of pulling the trigger that killed the pair of teens. He then escaped to his home country, Mexico. He was also arrested there for a minor crime in December 2015. But police there let him go before they discovered that he is wanted in Texas.

Flores was arrested again in Reynosa, Mexico in 2016. He had a shoot-out with the Mexican police in one incident. Hawthorne said that Flores was in the country illegally. The fact that he was a Mexican citizen also made it hard for American authorities to get him back.

The process was made even tougher and more complicated with the fact that Mexico does not have the death penalty and won’t extradite their citizens who are suspects in other countries if they will face the death penalty there. The district attorney handling his case in the U.S. then agreed to waive the death penalty just to have Flores back to pursue cases against him. It is not yet clear what motivated the killings. The authorities have yet to interview Flores, who was still being booked into the local jail.

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[tw_tags] #MAGA #Mexico #BuildThatWall #Extradition #IllegalImmigrants #Crime #News [/tw_tags]

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Mexican-immigrant-accused-in-execution-style-12631531.php