DPS gives freeway shooting details to police

The Arizona Department of Public Safety has turned over evidence gathered in its investigation of a string of freeway shootings in 2015 to the Phoenix Police Department.

The DPS has handed over ballistic evidence to assist Phoenix police with their investigation of Aaron Juan Saucedo, who is being held in a 2015 fatal shooting, said Trooper Kameron Lee, a DPS spokesman.

Phoenix police say they developed probable cause to arrest Saucedo, 23, as a suspect in the murder of 61-year-old Raul Romero, who was gunned down outside his car on Aug. 16, 2015.

The link, police say, was a Hi-Point 9mm handgun Saucedo had pawned less than three weeks after the murder.

Due to the type of gun use in the case, speculation quickly arose regarding a possible connection to the freeway shootings that occurred the same year and also involved a Hi-Point 9mm handgun.

To further the similarities between the two cases, Lee said both guns connected to the two crimes were pawned at Mo Money Pawn Shop, near 12th Street and Indian School Road.

According to the DPS, investigators obtained eight weapons from Valley pawn shops on Sept. 17, 2015. They were all test fired in connection with the freeway shootings, a string of at least 11 incidents in August and September 2015, most of which occurred along a stretch of Interstate 10 in Phoenix.

Investigators began to analyze the bullet fragments but stopped when fragments from the fourth gun matched evidence recovered from a

victim’s vehicle, Lee said.

The gun belonged to Leslie Merritt Jr., 22, who was arrested the next day in the freeway-shootings case. The case, however, unraveled and Merritt Jr. was released from jail on April 25, 2016, with all charges dismissed. He has filed a lawsuit against the state, Maricopa County and prosecutors alleging false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and aiding and abetting tortious conduct.

But the four remaining guns, including Saucedo’s, were never analyzed and returned to pawn shops on Sept. 20, 2015, according to DPS spokesman Raul Garcia.

“If we had gone on to analyze guns 5 to 8 ... what are you saying about the match that you identified with gun 4?” Raul said. “You’re discrediting your own investigation. If your child goes missing at a carnival and the child is found. Do you keep looking for the missing child?”

The DPS issued a statement on Monday saying that Saucedo has not been linked to the freeway shootings.

“We want to quell any conspiracy theories,” Lee said.

The DPS said that, following Saucedo’s arrest, information from both cases was submitted to the National Integrated Ballistics Network database, and there was no match.

Evidence, though, was handed over to Phoenix police on Monday, according to Lee.

“It was a ‘let us give you what we have, so you can eliminate what possibility that it’s someone else’,” Lee said. “What they do with that evidence, you will have to ask them.”

Phoenix Sgt. Jonathan Howard told The Arizona Republic that the evidence from the DPS is some of the evidence being compared to several Phoenix police investigations.

“We are comparing evidence in a large variety of cases to determine if there are any possible links,” Howard said.

Romero was found dead in 2015 near his car in an apartment complex parking lot near Seventh Street and Montebello Avenue after a burst of rapid gunfire sent residents from their homes.

Daughter Lora Romero described the victim as a “loving, caring, hardworking man.” He had five children and four grandchildren, whom his daughter said “he would do anything for.”

In stating the case against Saucedo in court records, police did not provide a motive for the fatal shooting. Saucedo’s mother had been dating Romero at the time of his murder, according to court records.

“Saucedo did not wish to speak with investigators except to say he did not commit this crime,” records say.