Illegal immigrant not suspect in Texas murder

Published 9:35 am Tuesday, August 16, 2016

A man whose attorney says he has been living here for 11 years may be a mystery to local authorities, but he is no longer being held as a suspected murderer from Texas.

Maj. John Gibson with the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Monday afternoon that authorities in Houston have released their hold on a man who was arrested on Aug. 2 here under the name of Leandro Lozano-Jiminez. Further fingerprint analysis showed the man’s prints did not match the prints of a man accused of a New Year’s Day murder in Houston in 2010.

But Gibson said local authorities are still not completely sure who the man whom deputies pulled over for a tail light violation is exactly. Local attorney Sam Sanders said the man’s name is Jose Leandro Jimenez-Arredondo, and he has built a life in Dalton for more than a decade with his wife and family.

“They have determined he is not the suspect in Houston, but we haven’t determined exactly who he is yet,” Gibson said. “We will hold him and try to get together with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Tuesday) and try to get more information. He gave his name and date of birth the same as the suspect and when we enter it into the computer, a lot of similarities were correct.”

Sanders said from the beginning he knew Jimenez-Arredondo wasn’t the murder suspect because of key pieces of evidence in his wife’s possession.

“Thank goodness for cellphone cameras,” Sanders said. “We knew it wasn’t him from our standpoint immediately. Luckily, this crime fell on a holiday and we had many pictures of him and his family here in Dalton at the time. The cool thing is thank goodness for fingerprints. All of those things work in our favor. The sheriff’s office figured it out and the extradition specialist in Harris County (Texas) got on it.”

Sanders said the combination of names and similar physical characteristics led computers to make a match early after his client was arrested.

“He had shared the ‘same descriptor information as our fugitive,’ according to the authorities in Texas,” Sanders said. “Same name, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color … but this guy has lived here since 2005.”

According to the Dalton Police Department, Jimenez-Arredondo had false identification documents and was using a stolen Social Security number. The DPD added six counts of forgery to the tail light charge as well as giving false information to law officers and driving without a license. Whitfield County officials said he had been living here under the alias of Felix Cruz Ocasio and was employed by Columbia Recycling.

Sanders said Jimenez-Arredondo is from Mexico. He said he will now turn his attention to working with authorities to get a bond set for the forgery charges and the misdemeanor charges that remain.

“We are tackling this one problem at a time,” Sanders said. “There are still some things we are going to have to figure out. We will handle that later. His family is very excited that this part of the case is behind them. They knew it was the wrong guy.”

Gibson said Jimenez-Arredondo will remain in custody at least until a new bond hearing can be held in Superior Court.

“We will probably hold onto him and make sure we really know who is,” Gibson said. “He was working under one name and gave us another name, and then his fingerprints gave us another name.

“This individual has been using a lot of aliases over a long period of time. We will have to sit down and verify things and try to get some more details. This is obviously the result of someone using false identities for a long period of time. That happens when people immigrate and hide their identity and their status. It leads to a lot more confusion. Now that we know he isn’t held for murder, we will try to sort out the rest.”