Juan Carlos Mata is accused of killing Lesley Reyes before killing himself. (Screenshots from ABC13 Houston)
A 20-year-old Texas man, sought in the ambush slaying of his girlfriend after she broke up with him, killed himself at the location where he allegedly killed her days earlier, in front of an officer arriving on a call of a suspicious male seen near her makeshift memorial.
Juan Carlos Mata, 20, took his own life with a shotgun as police arrived early Thursday morning at a Pasadena apartment complex outside Houston, police said in a news conference. The location was where Mata waited for Lesley Reyes to get home from work before midnight Monday when he shot and killed her, authorities said.
The suicide ended the search for the suspect, but police said there is some more investigation that needs to be done, including confirming whether the weapon was the same one used in Reyes’ killing.
“It doesn’t certainly make it any easier for any of the families involved,” Pasadena Police Sgt. Raul Granados said in the news conference. “It makes it safer for our community because we know there’s not a subject out there with a weapon.”
After the shooting Monday, police said Mata was still at the crime scene and walked away when police arrived, prompting a manhunt.
“Our officers weren’t able to pursue him because they tended to the victim first and immediately noticed that she was deceased,” Granados said. “By the time they tried to go after his location, he was already gone.”
Police searched nearby fields and circulated his picture, hoping someone would give them information, the sergeant said.
“We weren’t able to obtain any information,” Granados said. “We just know that he showed up back at the scene and this is where we found him this morning.”
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The victim’s family told KHOU the two were in a toxic relationship before they broke up last month after dating for about a year. He was obsessed with her, they said.
“We did get to meet him, and we let him in our home,” Reyes’ sister, Lourdes Martinez, told the outlet. “We were very open to him, and now, he has really just hurt our family a lot.”
Martinez also told local ABC13 Mata didn’t want to see her with someone else.
“He knew what he did. He knew what he did,” she said, the network reported.
The shooting shocked the neighborhood.
“My stomach is just in knots just reliving her screams, you know?” an unidentified neighbor told the station. “Now it’s like, oh my God, I can’t believe somebody who looked so happy ended up being murdered, cold-blooded.”
A fundraising site described Reyes, one of two daughters, as “a bright and beautiful soul who was taken from us too soon at the age of 19.”
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