A Mexican man suspected in a 2003 killing of an off-duty Border Patrol agent in Cananea, Sonora, is in custody of the Cochise County Sheriff's Office.
During a routine warrant check on April 20, sheriff's officials discovered Jose Arturo Arreola-Lopez, 26, was in custody in St. Paul, Minn., on a separate charge, said Carol Capas, Cochise County Sheriff's spokeswoman.
After officials worked with authorities in Minnesota to extradite Arreola-Lopez to Arizona, he was booked into the Cochise County jail on Wednesday on an outstanding probation violation stemming from a 2002 marijuana smuggling charge.
Arreola-Lopez is suspected along with three others of beating off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent Jorge Luis Salomon to death in late February 2003 in Cananea, which is about 40 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Salomon and the four men went out to have drinks but when the men discovered he was a Border Patrol agent, they apparently attacked him.
Mexican law enforcement arrested one man in the days after the killing, Francisco Javier Rosas Molina, 18. They told U.S. authorities to be on the lookout for three men who might be headed back into the United States to avoid capture - Arreola-Lopez, Jesus Cesar Abusto Villa Villareal and Edna Yardis Montoya Medina, according to Arizona Daily Star news archives.
Arreola-Lopez is scheduled to have a court hearing on June 6 in Cochise County. A judge will determine how long he must serve in U.S. prison on the probation violation. When he's done with that sentence, U.S. federal immigration officials will coordinate to with Mexican officials to extradite him there to face murder charges.
Contact reporter Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com.
