Texas police on Saturday arrested a veteran US Border Patrol agent, who is suspected of killing four women within the past two weeks and kidnapping a fifth.
Juan David Ortiz, a 35-year-old who has worked for Border Patrol for a decade, was found hiding in a Laredo parking lot after a woman he allegedly abducted was able to escape and alert law enforcement, local media reports said.
"We feel that our efforts have gathered strong evidence against this killer. Our community is safe from this killer," Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar said in a statement, adding that Ortiz would be formally charged later on Saturday.
The four victims' names were not immediately disclosed. According to local media reports in Laredo, 150 miles (240 km) southwest of San Antonio, they had been working as prostitutes.
The bodies of two of the women were discovered earlier this month along Interstate 35 in rural northwest Webb County, the Laredo Morning Times reported, while the third and fourth were found in the same area this weekend.
A senior US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official, Andrew Meehan, said in a statement that the agency was cooperating fully with the investigators.
While it was not agency policy to comment on the details of an ongoing investigation, Meehan said, criminal conduct by CBP employees is not and will not be tolerated.
"Our sincerest condolences go out to the victims' family and friends," Meehan's statement said.
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