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A fugitive wanted in the fatal shooting of three people, including two children playing with kittens in the backyard of their Pennsylvania home, has been arrested in Philadelphia, federal officials said Wednesday.
The US Marshals Service said 27-year-old Ivan Claudio Rosero was in a park and was taken into custody Tuesday evening without incident. Two other suspects, including a minor, were arrested in Lebanon shortly after the May 30 killings. Prosecutors said they plan to pursue the death penalty against Rosero and the other adult suspect.
Brothers Jesus and Sebastian Perez-Salomé, aged 8 and 9, and a third victim were killed. A family member previously told The Associated Press that the boys’ mother was working at a nearby convenience store when she heard gunshots and ran home to find they had been shot. The boys were “really close” and always played together, usually with superhero characters, according to their uncle, Felix Muniz Torres.
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The gunmen apparently targeted the third person killed, 19-year-old Joshua Lugo-Perez, over what authorities called “an earlier altercation.” He and the boys lived in the house where the shooting took place, but Lugo-Perez was not related to them.
Ivan Claudio Rosero, a fugitive linked to a triple homicide in Lebanon, Pennsylvania for which two others had already been arrested, was found in Philadelphia and taken into custody. (US Marshals service via AP)
Rosero fled the scene of the shooting in a white BMW that investigators later linked to his girlfriend. Rosero had the keys to the BMW when he was arrested and the car was nearby, officials said.
Rosero told detectives he drove himself and the other gunmen to the home in Lebanon, and he admitted to firing several shots, according to a press release from the Lebanon Prosecutor’s Office.
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Lebanon Prosecutor Pier Hess Graf said she was grateful that all suspects had been taken into custody.
“When children are killed, when a community is again endangered by senseless gun violence, justice demands everything possible,” she said.
Court records do not include attorneys for Rosero and the other defendants, Alex Torres Santos, 22, and a 16-year-old man. All three were charged with triple murder, conspiracy and other crimes, and remain in custody.
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Rosero’s girlfriend, Tiffany Koziara, lied to investigators about her contact with him and booked a hotel room for herself and Rosero at the time authorities searched her home, the prosecutor’s office said. She was charged with obstructing the apprehension of a fugitive and held on $250,000 bail. The court records listed no attorney for her.
