Laredo, Texas
Killing spree: A U.S. Border Patrol agent was arrested last week and confessed to fatally shooting four women, prosecutors said. The county sheriff described Juan David Ortiz, 35, as a “serial killer” who appeared to be “hunting” prostitutes. A woman who may have been his intended fifth target was with Ortiz in his truck when she mentioned one of the prostitutes who’d recently gone missing. Ortiz pulled a pistol and grabbed at her shirt, but she escaped the car and ran to a gas station, where she found a state trooper. Ortiz fled on foot and was discovered in the bed of a truck in a hotel parking lot in Laredo, a city of about 250,000 people near the U.S.-Mexico border. He’d allegedly continued working as usual as a border agent supervisor while committing the murders off duty.