Man arrested in 2003 slaying
Suspect in Houston cantina brawl caught by ICE at the border
Alfred Zaldana’s request for a song at an East End cantina proved fatal.
Another patron gunned down 37-year-old Zaldana on a summer night in 2003 for interrupting a band in the middle of his requested tune, police said. The patron — known to bargoers as “Guerro” at the now defunct watering hole at 4201 Navigation Blvd. — is alleged to have killed Zaldana because he was apparently slighted by the disruption, according to a criminal complaint.
The suspect was identified a month later as Jose Luis Lopez, but he evaded capture for the next 16 years until June 7 when U.S. Customs and Border Protection picked him up in the Rio Grand Valley, Houston police spokesman Kese Smith said Wednesday.
Lopez had been on the lam since charges of murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon were filed against him. He was also accused of shooting the victim’s pal who tried calming the bar clash.
The confrontation escalated when Lopez confronted Zaldana and his friend, Alonzo Valdez Von, for interrupting the musicians whom he had paid to play a particular song, the genre of which has been lost to time. Zaldana was first to draw a pistol and fired a shot in the bar without hitting anyone, investigators said.
Von ushered his buddy away from the confrontation and to a pool table. Meanwhile, Lopez left the bar and returned moments later with his a pistol from his car, police said.
He shot Von and Zaldana both in the chest, police said. Zaldana died at the scene.
Lopez is now 51 and behind bars at the Harris County Jail with a deportation detainer on him should he post bail.
A federal case filed against a Jose Luis Lopez on the same day as when Houston police said their murder suspect was apprehended states the man was caught crossing the Rio Grande River in a raft near the Roma port of entry.
The man in that case pleaded guilty to unlawfully entering the United States and was sentenced to 30 days imprisonment.
Smith said Lopez was extradited Friday from Zapata County to Harris County. He appeared in a probable cause hearing and was ordered held on a combined $80,000 for the two charges.
Court records at the time of the shooting listed the Mexican national as living in the 4000 block of Walker Street — about a mile from the bar.
His whereabouts over the past 16 years have been elusive — even to his ex-wife who said her lawyer had to serve him their divorce notice in a newspaper after failing to track him down. She said in Spanish that she separated from Lopez before he was alleged to have killed a man.
At the time of the shooting, Lopez had just wrapped up deferred adjudication for an aggravated assault charge from 1999.
Neal Davis, a lawyer who Lopez retained in late June while in federal custody, said in an email Monday that his client intends to plead not guilty and that he is “looking forward to our day in court.”
The fatal shooting at what was once known as Daniel’s Bar in the East End thrust the bar and similar establishments in predominantly Hispanic enclaves in Housotn into news reports for attracting violent behavior and drunkenness as community leaders strived for neighborhood revitalization.
A decade earlier, the same cantina — under the name Luna’s Lounge — was the site of another killing.
A gunman killed Eligio Camancho, 39, with a shotgun in the parking lot. The man stumbled into the bar and died.