A Kansas man was arrested nearly seven years after police say he fatally shot a 15-year-old refugee from Myanmar in an attempted robbery at a laundromat where the teenager worked, police in Kansas City announced Thursday.
Luis Samano, 24, is charged with murder and attempted aggravated robbery in the death of high school student December Htoo.
A co-worker found Htoo dead on the morning of Nov. 18, 2017, inside Kansas City’s Maple Hill Laundromat, according to NBC affiliate KSHB.
Htoo was lying face up next to a washing machine with multiple gunshot wounds, a police spokesperson told ABC News at the time. There were no signs of forced entry, no cash was stolen, and nothing had been broken at the scene.
Htoo’s case would remain cold until September 2021, when police recovered a gun used in his killing during a narcotics traffic stop. It went cold again until May of this year, when detectives obtained new information through interviews and reexamination of surveillance footage.
Authorities were eventually led to Samano, who was 17 years old at the time of Htoo’s death. He has been in prison since 2019 for an unrelated arson conviction.
Htoo had arrived in the United States when he was just 6 years old. Say Htoonay, Htoo’s sister, told ABC News that he was a hard worker who joined his high school’s wrestling team and choir and aspired to become a doctor.
In a Thursday statement, Htoo’s family said he is deeply missed by everyone who knew him.
“We understand it is pretty hard to get cold cases solved,” the statement read. “In our culture, we had never experienced something like this because our Karen community was fairly new to the US. We think it is wonderful and are grateful for the work that detectives did.”
