3rd Arrest Is Made in 1991 Tustin Slaying

A man suspected in the 1991 fatal shooting of a 14-year-old girl after a football game at Tustin High School was arrested early Thursday at a relative’s home in Murrieta, becoming the last of three cousins charged in a long-running case marked by custody snafus with Mexico.

Robert Garcia, 29, was put under surveillance Wednesday night and taken into custody about 5:30 the next morning by a team of investigators from the Tustin Police Department and the Orange County district attorney’s office, authorities said. Garcia’s cousins had been captured and convicted years ago. Ruben Guerrero, who was arrested shortly after the shooting, is serving 27 years to life in prison.

Albert Guerrero, 34, who was found in 1995 while hiding in Mexico, is serving 30 years to life.

Garcia is suspected of firing the shot that killed Lilia Vianey Guevara, a Westminster High School sophomore, on Sept. 13, 1991. She and her friends were arriving at a Tustin party when a fistfight broke out between two groups of young men, so they got back in their vehicle and fled, trailed by gunfire.

When Guevara turned to see what was going on, she was struck in the chest by a bullet.

The last arrest punctuates a case that in 1995 took investigators to Mexico, where Garcia and his cousin Albert Guerrero were known to be living. After months of fitful negotiations and a lobbying effort that included a letter from Tustin officials to then-President Clinton, Mexican officials turned Guerrero over to the FBI. Garcia remained a fugitive.

Nasario Solis, who at the time was the lead police detective on the case and now is an investigator with the district attorney’s office, said he is relieved that the manhunt is finally over.

“It’s taken a lot of work from a lot of people,” he said. “You don’t kill a 14-year-old girl and disappear. People don’t forget. I didn’t forget. Tustin didn’t forget.”

Guevara’s mother now lives in Brownsville, Texas, and police there were trying to track her down to relay the news.

Investigators from the district attorney’s fledgling Due Diligence Unit said they relied on old-fashioned detective work to find Garcia, accessing records from the motor vehicle department, automobile leasing companies and other sources.

They do not yet know where else he had been in the seven years since they believed he was living in Mexico.

The Due Diligence Unit was assembled less than two weeks ago to find 140 fugitives by looking for new leads in old cases. “There’s a message in this for all those fugitives out there,” said Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas. “We’re still looking for you. We’re going to find you and ... bring you to justice.”