A Webb County, Texas grand jury has indicted a man nearly a decade after he allegedly attempted to sexually assault the mother of nine children and killed her as she was walking home from work.
Using advanced forensic methods, investigators with the Texas Rangers and Laredo Police Department identified 42-year-old Sergio Mendez as the culprit who allegedly killed 33-year-old Janette Escamilla Jaramillo of Laredo, Texas, in 2016.
The Texas Rangers said in a press release that on May 18, 2016, Jaramillo left work to go home at about midnight, though she never made it to her destination.
Jaramillo’s body was discovered under a skate ramp just after daybreak at Seven Flags Park, by employees of the Laredo Parks and Recreation Department.
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Seven Flags Park is located just blocks from where Jaramillo lived, according to law enforcement officials.
Investigators learned that the victim had been brutally strangled after an attempted sexual assault.
During the investigation, detectives reviewed surveillance video footage showing Jaramillo walking with an unidentified person about 30 minutes after she was seen leaving her job.
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Police described the suspect as tall with short, cropped hair and wearing a trash bag, though that was likely because it was raining that night.
At the time, though, there was not enough evidence to arrest a suspect in Jaramillo’s case.
But in 2021, investigators were able to obtain funding from the Department of Justice (DOJ) after the case was identified as being eligible for the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) program.
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The funding allows agencies across the U.S. to further investigate unsolved sexual assaults and sexually-related homicides.
Investigators used the funds to conduct advanced DNA testing, which ultimately identified Mendez as a suspect.
On March 12, a grand jury indicted Mendez. He is currently in custody and serving a 10-year prison sentence in Edinburg, Texas, for an unrelated crime.
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