Associated Press
Associated Press
CIUDAD JUAREZ , Mexico - Police announced Wednesday they have arrested a 26-year-old suspect in connection with the killing of a woman in the rough border city of Ciudad Juarez in 2003.
The man, identified as Rito Romero Perez, was arrested by a special police squad on Tuesday in Chihuahua city, the capital of Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juarez is also located.
The arrest came more than two years after the body of Claudia Perez Serrato, 38, was found in Ciudad Juarez on Aug. 23, 2003.
State Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez Rodriguez told reporters that on the day of the killing, Romero Perez had an argument with Perez Serrato, his girlfriend at the time.
Romero Perez then allegedly stabbed her twice with a broken beer bottle, wounding her in the neck, before fleeing.
More than 350 women have been killed since 1993 in Juarez, a city of about 1.3 million people across the U.S. border from El Paso , Texas .
At least 100 killings appear to fit a pattern where young, slender women were sexually assaulted, strangled and dumped in the desert outside Juarez .
Also Wednesday, the woman who had served as special prosecutor for the Ciudad Juarez killings, Claudia Velarde, was sworn in as assistant attorney general, to replace an official who left for an appointment as a judge. No replacement for Velarde was immediately named.
Velarde said that prosecutors have now solved 80 percent of the killings that have occurred in Ciudad Juarez in the last decade, a claim that victims' relatives doubt.
Police discover corpse of woman in Ciudad Juárez
An identification found in the woman's purse showed she worked at one of the city's maquiladora assembly plants.