By Marielis Acevedo
Aug 25, 2023, 08:25 AM EDT
A judge in Harris County, Texas, denied bail to Juan Carlos García-Rodríguez, accused of raping and murdering 11-year-old Guatemalan girl María Elena González in a Pasadena apartment while the girl’s father worked.
The 18-year-old, also of Guatemalan origin, appeared in state court for the first time yesterday morning after being extradited from Shreveport, Louisiana.
Garcia-Rodriguez was charged with capital murder. This charge constitutes the most serious of all crimes of murder; It’s equivalent to first degree murder.
In Texas, the death penalty is legal, so, if convicted, the Hispanic could be punished with the death penalty. If that is not the case, the other penalty would be life imprisonment.
The severity of the act of murder is what determines whether or not a suspect will be charged with capital murder.
Garcia-Rodriguez is accused of raping and fatally strangling Gonzalez, who had arrived with his father at the Main Village Apartments, 1004 Main Street, just three months earlier.
On the day of the events, on August 12, the minor was alone in the building since her father Carmelo González had gone to work.
When González arrived at his work space around 10 am, he received a phone message from María Elena indicating that someone was knocking on the door. The father asked her daughter not to open it.
At about 2:30 pm when he returned from work, the man found his daughter’s body in a garbage bag inside a laundry basket under a bed.
The defendant lived in the complex for less than a month with two other residents. On Monday of last week he left the space on the grounds that he had found another job. However, he took the key to the apartment in which he resided. That item was seized at the scene and served as a key piece to establish a possible link between García-Rodríguez and the crime.
At the court hearing yesterday, it transpired that the boy alleged that two other men, at gunpoint, forced him to attack the girl.
At the moment, the authorities have no evidence to prove this version.