Officials nab illegal alien with murder conviction

BY BLAKE SCHMIDT, SUN STAFF WRITER

A man Wellton police found wandering around on the railroad tracks near Wellton turned out to be a convicted murderer and Mexican illegal alien who had made his way back into the U.S. after having been deported last year, according to Border Patrol spokesman Rick Hays.

Early Thursday morning, Wellton police saw Gerardo Lopez-Rios walking on the railroad tracks near town, according to Hays.

The police called Border Patrol, who determined that Lopez-Rios was a Mexican national in the United States illegally.

Wellton agents took Lopez-Rios to the Wellton Border Patrol Station, where they ran his fingerprints through the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), as is routine for all illegal immigrants apprehended by the patrol.

"We found out — whoa — we've got a convicted murderer on our hands here," Hays said.