Aurora police used extensive surveillance video searches, witness statements and facial recognition software to track and arrest a man suspected of murder in a fatal Aurora shooting, according to court documents.
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Carlos Zarco, 50, was arrested last week on investigation of second-degree murder in the death of 45-year-old Nathanial Liester, according to an affidavit from the Aurora Police Department. Investigators previously identified the victim, who had not been named at the time, as a 25-year-old man.
In addition to the murder charge, Zarco faces two violent crime sentence enhancers in the case, court records show.
Zarco is accused of fatally shooting Liester in an Aurora alley between the 1400 blocks of Dallas and Clinton streets in the early hours of June 7, police said. Aurora officers responded to the shooting at 4:28 a.m., according to Zarco’s arrest affidavit.
Paramedics took Liester to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly before 5 a.m., according to the affidavit.
One witness told police that she heard a man saying “something to the effect of ‘you owe me, you owe me’ and ‘you haven’t paid, and you want more (expletive)?’” before the shooting, the affidavit stated.
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Liester said he would pay the man and started to turn away, which is when he was shot in the back by another man, the witness told police in the affidavit.
Investigators used surveillance videos to track the shooter’s path throughout the day, including where he discarded several articles of clothing after the shooting, police wrote in the affidavit. At one point before the shooting, the man’s face was captured on camera inside a gas station — a video that police matched to Zarco’s driver’s license photo, according to the affidavit.
Zarco’s “distinctive” tattoos also matched the tattoos captured on the suspect by surveillance cameras, and one eyewitness to the shooting positively identified Zarco from a photo array, police said.
The man is next scheduled to appear in court Tuesday morning for an advisement hearing.
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