A 23-year-old Connecticut man, Lance Morales of Waterbury, has been arrested in Puerto Rico following a violent shooting that left a young mother and her four-month-old baby dead. The shooting occurred in Hartford, and the mother-baby duo has been identified as 20-year-old Jessiah Mercado and her child, Messiah Diaz, both from Springfield, Massachusetts.
The tragic incident unfolded last Tuesday, when according to Boston 25 News, a vehicle with multiple gunshot victims arrived at Hartford Hospital just before 3 p.m. Mercado and Diaz were pronounced dead at the hospital. An additional male victim in his twenties was reported to have sustained a non-life-threatening gunshot wound. The driver emerged uninjured. Hartford Police announced that they believe the victims were targeted when the suspect's vehicle pulled alongside theirs and began to open fire on New Britain Avenue.
In a coordinated manhunt between Hartford Police and U.S. Marshals from Massachusetts and Connecticut, Morales was tracked down and apprehended at a house in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. "Since the commission of this senseless and heinous act of violence, investigators from the Hartford Police Department and the U.S. Marshals Service Violent Fugitive Task Forces in Connecticut and Puerto Rico have tirelessly worked around the clock to bring the suspect to justice," said acting U.S. Marshal for the District of Connecticut Lawrence Bobnick, in a statement obtained by CBS News.
The authorities have charged Morales with a slew of serious offenses including criminal possession of a firearm, assault, criminal attempt to commit assault, two counts of murder, and murder with special circumstances. Currently held on a $3 million bond, Morales is now facing extradition to Connecticut, where he will be tried for these charges.
The investigation is still ongoing as police work to piece together the events leading up to the fatal encounter. Updates are expected as further details emerge from the inquiry.
