FBI captures a Most Wanted fugitive in Mexico after 10 years on the run

Federal authorities said they tracked down one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted fugitives who had been hiding out in central Mexico for nearly a decade.

FBI Director Kash Patel said agents on Friday captured Alejandro Rosales Castillo, 27, in the city of Pachuca, about 70 miles north of Mexico City.

He was wanted in connection to the 2016 slaying of 23-year-old Truc Quan “Sandy” Ly Le in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Alejandro Castillo’s arrest is the fifth Ten Most Wanted Fugitive captured under this administration and this FBI since last year — more than the entire previous four years combined,” Mr. Patel said in a statement. “When you have an administration who gives law enforcement the support to execute the mission, they get the job done like nobody else.”

Officials said Castillo, who worked with Le at a restaurant in Charlotte, had briefly dated the victim before her death.

Authorities said Castillo, then 17, had texted Le to say he wanted to repay the money she had lent him. The pair agreed to meet on Aug. 9, 2016, at a gas station mini-mart, where Le was last seen alive.

Investigators accused Castillo of mugging Le at gunpoint during the encounter, forcing her to withdraw $1,000 from her bank account.

The Most Wanted fugitive then took Le to a wooded area in Cabarrus County and fatally shot her in the head, the FBI said. Detectives found her body in a ravine.

Officials said Castillo and his accomplice-girlfriend, then-19-year-old Ahmia Feaster, drove Le’s car from North Carolina to Phoenix, Arizona. The pair ditched the car at a bus shelter and were seen in surveillance footage crossing the border into Mexico.

After hiding out in Mexico for two months, Feaster turned herself in to police in Aguascalientes. She was extradited to the U.S. and faced charges of car theft and accessory after the fact.

Court records showed Feaster posted bond at the time, and will make her next appearance before a judge in June.

Feaster told investigators that she and Castillo were staying with his family in Aguascalientes when they first arrived in Mexico, but the fugitive soon vanished.

Castillo was charged with first-degree murder in North Carolina state court and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution in federal court. The FBI put him on its Most Wanted list in 2017.

“Nearly nine years after a Charlotte murder, the man responsible is finally in custody,” Rep. Pat Harrington, North Carolina Republican, posted on X. “Grateful for the persistence of [FBI Charlotte], Charlotte-Mecklenburg police, and our federal partners who never stopped working to bring justice home to North Carolina.”