A Chilean national accused of shooting his suburban New York girlfriend and her two teen sons, leaving one of them dead, snuck back into the country after he was deported two decades ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told Fox News Digital.
Fernando Andres Jimenez Meza, 40, is accused of using an illegally possessed handgun to shoot his girlfriend and her two sons as she shielded them in a townhouse in Somers around 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 28, New York State Police said.
His girlfriend's 15-year-old son, Michael Raimondi, was killed. Michael Raimondi's mother and his 13-year-old brother were injured.
The teens' mother, 38, had been dating Jimenez Meza on and off for the past three or four years, The Journal News reported.
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At a vigil held Saturday, one of Michael Raimondi's teachers said he had "a rich interior life full of imagination, and vibrant and unique ideas," and that "there was so much depth and creativity within him, we were only beginning to uncover [it]."
"He loved the magic of origami, the complex mechanics of a car, and Legos. He could take apart anything and he could put it back together again," another teacher said of the 10th-grader, CBS reported.
Jimenez Meza was apprehended in the nearby town of Putnam Valley on Wednesday after a manhunt following the shooting.
A retired NYPD detective turned real estate agent helped nab the perpetrator after hearing that Jimenez Meza was on the loose near her office in Putnam Valley. When she noticed that her office's air conditioning unit was lying on the ground rather than lodged in the window and that the blinds were completely drawn, she checked her office surveillance camera and heard heavy breathing, the New York Post reported.
She took the information to a state trooper parked at a nearby intersection.
"I said, ‘Listen to me… I’m 99.9% sure that the guy who shot the three people is in my office right now,’" Patricia Schiller told the Post
Less than half an hour later, Jimenez Meza was apprehended – but not before he was bitten in the arm and leg by a police dog.
ICE told Fox News Digital that it lodged an immigration detainer for Jimenez Meza on Wednesday at Westchester County Jail, where he is being held without bail on charges of second-degree murder, second-degree attempted murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
"The horrific killing in Somers of a high school child by an illegal immigrant is a story that’s been repeated across the nation far too many times," U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., wrote in a statement.
Jimenez Meza told U.S. Border Patrol agents that he was a Mexican national named Erik Melendez-Arellano when he was caught entering the country illegally near Tecate, California, on Aug. 4, 2004, an ICE spokesperson said.
He was taken into custody on Aug. 11, 2004, and voluntarily deported to Mexico, ICE said.
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On Sept. 11, 2018, Jimenez Meza was arrested on a drunken driving charge and released on a $500 fine, the New York Post reported. It's unclear whether local authorities knew he was in the country illegally. The outlet also said he was charged with assault that year, but the case is sealed and details are not immediately available.
