Newly released body camera footage shows the arrest of an illegal immigrant accused of killing Maryland mother Rachel Morin.
In a video released by the Tulsa Police Department: From FOX 5Officers encountered Victor Martinez Hernandez at a bar in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
His arrest came 10 months after an intense nationwide manhunt began.
The mother of five children, ages 8 to 18, was raped and then murdered while jogging on Mama & Pa Trail in Harford County, Maryland, in August.
In the video, officers arrive at the bar where Martinez-Hernandez was sitting.
After the initial encounter, he complied as he was escorted out of the bar and police began asking him for identification.
Martinez-Hernandez told officers he did not have any identification and gave a false name.
“Do you live in El Salvador?” one of the officers can be heard asking.
Once the migrants’ identities were known, officers took photos to publicize the long-awaited arrest of the suspect in Morin’s murder.
in Press ConferenceHarford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said Victor Martinez-Hernandez was arrested in Tulsa and booked.
“Five hours after we met [Morin’s] “Just before midnight, our family’s time, police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with the assistance of our federal partners, located and arrested Rachel’s killer, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez,” Gahler said.
He was charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape.
Police said the 23-year-old immigrant entered the United States illegally in February 2023.
“We all suspected that Rachel was not his first victim,” Gahler said. “My understanding is that this suspect, this monster, brutally murdered a young woman in El Salvador a month ago in January of 2023, before illegally fleeing to the United States.”
Gahler said the first DNA match to Martinez-Hernandez was from the March 2023 attack in Los Angeles.
“Once in our country, and perhaps emboldened by his anonymity, he went on to brutally assault a 9-year-old girl and her mother in Los Angeles in March of 2023,” Gahler said. “And as we all know, this was the first DNA match linking Rachel’s case to the Los Angeles case.”
The sheriff focused his remarks on the crisis at the southern border and addressed the White House and “members of Congress.”
“We are 1,800 miles away from the southern border,” Gahler said, “and the American people are not safe because of our failed immigration policies.”
“This is the second time in two years that an innocent woman in Harford County has had her life wrongfully taken by criminals in our country,” he said. “In both cases, the suspect was an individual from El Salvador with ties to organized crime. This should never happen.”
“Victor Hernandez did not come to this country to better his life or his family’s. He came to escape the crimes he committed in El Salvador. He came to murder Rachel. And, God’s will, he would not murder anyone else. But that should never have been allowed to happen.”
Rachel Morin murder case
Maureen, 37, was reported missing by her boyfriend in August 2023. According to her boyfriend, Maureen never returned on Aug. 5, 2023, after going for a run on Mama & Pa Trail, a pedestrian-only trail in Bel Air, a quiet and usually safe town about 18 miles northeast of Baltimore.
Her body was found by the side of the road the next day.
In February, police released a new sketch of Martinez-Hernandez.
The sketch was created after DNA testing linked Martinez-Hernandez to a home invasion scene in Los Angeles.
Police used the Combined DNA Indexing System (CODIS) and found a single match to the DNA of an unidentified Hispanic male.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) recovered a hat that was left at the scene of a home invasion that escalated into riots in March 2023, leaving several people injured, including an underage child.
The suspect is said to have broken into the home in the middle of the night and assaulted the family inside before being forced out. Security camera footage showed a shirtless man leaving through the front door.
“I’m going to keep this short because I’m very emotional,” said Rachel’s mother, Patricia Morin. “I want to take this opportunity to thank the police department for all their hard work.”
“They really cared about our family and about my daughter,” she said. “They were working hard and trying to find whoever killed her.”
