SAN ANTONIO — Authorities hope surveillance video will lead to answers in the murders of a pregnant 18-year-old who disappeared before Christmas and her boyfriend, a Texas police chief said. Both were found in a car with a gunshot wound to the head and may have died days before their discovery.
On Friday, as family and friends mourned the deaths of Savanah Nicole Soto, 18, and Matthew Guerra, 22, police had given no possible motives or suspects. Soto’s family has stated that the young woman was about to give birth and that she had been scheduled for an induced labor when she disappeared last week.
The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled both deaths were homicides caused by gunshot wounds to the head.
The couple was found Tuesday in Guerra’s car outside a San Antonio apartment complex, a crime scene that San Antonio Police Chief William McManus originally described as “very, very disconcerting.”
On Thursday, police asked the public for help identifying two people seen on surveillance video that included the vehicle and was recorded before the bodies were found.
McManus would not say whether investigators believe the couple was dead when the video was recorded.
“Detectives are hopeful that the surveillance video leads to the events that led to his death,” McManus said.
The recording shows Guerra’s car stopping briefly next to a pickup truck at a location near where the couple was found, McManus said. A person gets out of the truck and approaches the driver’s side of the car. Another person is briefly seen exiting Guerra’s vehicle, but McManus said they do not believe that person was one of the victims.
He has stated that the case is a murder investigation and has said that it is a “heinous act.”
Soto was scheduled to have an induced birth at a hospital last Saturday night, her family told KENS-TV. But her mother said she got no answer that same day when she knocked on the door of Soto’s apartment in the suburb of Leon Valley.
Source: With information from AP
