After more than a year-and-a-half on the run, a Colusa County man suspected of killing his former girlfriend and leaving her body in a Woodland parking lot is in law-enforcement custody.
Salvador Vaca Garcia Jr., 23, was turned over to members of a Colusa County task force on Sunday after being located by the U.S. Marshals Service in Guadalajara, Mexico, Colusa Police Chief Josh Fitch announced on his agency’s Facebook page. He was expected to be booked into the Colusa County Jail.
Garcia is suspected of fatally bludgeoning ex-girlfriend Karen Garcia Romero, 21 — also the mother of the couple’s toddler daughter — inside his apartment in early January 2018, then abandoning her body inside her vehicle at a Woodland shopping center.
He went on the lam several days later, but not before giving multiple media interviews in which he claimed to have seen Garcia Romero drive away from her apartment the morning she vanished, and that she seemed “in a rush to get out.”
“And the next day I tried calling … sent her a message to let her know her mom was worried. No reply,” a tearful Garcia told CBS 13. “Tried calling her multiple times throughout the day. No response. Phone rings but nothing.”
Colusa authorities long believed Garcia had fled to Mexico, where his suspected getaway vehicle, a stolen Toyota minivan, was recovered last fall
“The resources and experience the U.S. Marshals Service brought to the investigation which resulted in the apprehension of Salvador Garcia Jr. should not go unnoticed,” Fitch said in the Facebook post. “The law enforcement agencies of Colusa County would like to give thanks to the U.S. Marshals Service for their assistance as well as to all who helped throughout this over a yearlong investigation.”
Other agencies helping in the manhunt included the Riverside Police Department, Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office, Government of Mexico Fiscalia General de Jalisco-Grupo De Ordenes y Apprensiones, and the Instituto Nacional de Migracion, Fitch said.
The case was featured in February on “In Pursuit with John Walsh,” an Investigation Discovery program dedicated to the search for missing children and fugitives on the run. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that exposure led to Garcia’s capture.
Garcia Romero’s homicide served a double dose of grief to her family, who just the day before she disappeared saw her younger sister Jessica, 19, and four of her friends killed in a head-on I-5 collision in northern Yolo County caused by an intoxicated wrong-way driver.
On the day Garcia Romero went missing, Jan. 8, 2018, texts were sent from her cell phone indicating she planned to run errands in Vacaville and Roseville and that she “needed time for myself.” Her family filed a missing-person report when she failed to return home.
Fitch has said that Garcia and Garcia Romero had a volatile history, having broken up shortly before her disappearance after Garcia’s arrest on domestic violence charges the previous month.
Investigators served a search warrant at Garcia’s Oak Street residence in Colusa, where they reported finding “evidence of a homicide,” according to a news release at the time. Garcia Romero’s body was found Jan. 14 inside her vehicle parked at the Marshall’s shopping plaza at West and Main Streets in Woodland.
She had died of blunt-force trauma to the head, Yolo County coroner’s officials ruled. Garcia is believed to have driven the body there, then contacted an unsuspecting relative for a ride home, saying he had been stranded.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene