A Mexican national, who has been one of the United States’ most-wanted fugitives for over two decades for fatally shooting someone outside a bar in Ohio, was recently found working as a police officer in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Antonio Riano, now 62, was arrested in his hometown of Zapotitlan Palmas, where he was charged with first-degree murder and handed over to U.S. marshals in Mexico City.
“When Riano was arrested in Mexico, he was found to be working as a local police officer,” the agency said in a news release.
Riano fled Ohio after allegedly shooting 25-year-old Benjamin Becarra on December 19, 2004, outside the Roundhouse Bar in Hamilton, Ohio. Witnesses said the two men got into an argument inside the bar. When the dispute moved outside, a security camera allegedly caught Riano fatally shooting the other man in the face.
Police identified him through witnesses and surveillance video, which showed Riano purchasing ammo at a Walmart 45 minutes before the shooting.
A search warrant was conducted on a home in Hamilton, where police discovered Riano had several aliases and “papers to create false documentation so he could obtain different identifications.”
A grand jury indicted Riano on first-degree murder on February 16, 2005, but he failed to appear at his scheduled arraignment. Instead, he fled to Mexico to avoid prosecution.
Law enforcement officials credited the collaborative work of the different departments that ended in Riano’s arrest.
“This type of apprehension would not be possible without the cooperation and due diligence of both the prosecutor’s office investigators, the United States Marshal Service and the United States Department of Justice,” prosecutor Michael T. Gmoser said.
The case went cold until January of this year when Paul Newton, chief investigator for the Butler County Prosecutor’s Office, received the reapplication for the provisional warrant, at which point Newton’s team used Facebook and other social media outlets to track Riano down.
“I’m like, ‘My God, there he is!’” Newton told WKRC. “A little bit grayer, a little bit older, but it was him.”
When he fled the country, Riano left a wife and three children behind in Ohio, WKRC reported. Becarra’s family has been notified of Riano’s arrest and extradition, according to the outlet.
“The United States Marshal Service, through our violent fugitive task forces, assists our state and local law enforcement partners to apprehend the area’s most dangerous fugitives,” said Michael D. Black, U.S. marshal for the Southern District of Ohio. “This arrest is the result of the ongoing sharing of information between the agencies and the determination of the investigators who refused to give up on this case.”
As Riano was taken into custody at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, a WKRC-TV reporter asked why he became a police officer. In Spanish, he replied that he “wanted to help the people of Mexico.”
