TCSO closes deadly shooting case
Incident dates back to 1995
The Tulare County Sheriff’s Office announced its Cold Case Unit has closed a murder case dating back to 1995.
In August, Cold Case Det. Chris Dempsie began looking into the shooting death of Edward Perez of Earlimart. Perez was killed in his front yard, on July 10, 1995, as he tried to break up a disturbance between two of his neighbors.
His neighbor, Antonio Morales Zamora, pulled out a handgun during the disturbance and shot and killed Perez, who had been acting as a peacekeeper.
Investigators, at the time, knew Zamora had killed Perez and feared he had fled to Mexico, Det. Dempsie said.
In 1997, Zamora was arrested by INS agents in Arizona under the alias Antonio Garcia Rodriguez, but it wasn’t until 2002 that his fingerprint taken during that arrest revealed he was a homicide suspect.
Det. Dempsie met with
the victim’s daughter recently. She was only 7 years old when her father was killed.
Using social media sites and online people searches, Det. Dempsie began researching the case. Through investigation, it was revealed that the suspect, Zamora, died on May 16, 2017 in Tijuana at the age of 60.
“The case is closed and I’m glad to give the family some closure,” Det. Dempsie said. “We know he won’t be killing anyone else.”