An illegal immigrant from Honduras suspected of kidnapping and raping a 13-year-old girl in Louisiana surrendered to the Kenner Police Department on Wednesday.
Diego Rodriguez-Salvador, 24, is accused of holding a 13-year-old girl at knifepoint while driving her to his trailer park home and raping her, NBC’s New Orleans affiliate WDSU reported. Police asked for the public’s help in finding Rodriguez-Salvodor before he turned himself over to authorities in New Orleans. WDSU reported that police initially struggled to find the suspect because he is “undocumented,” and Kenner Police Chief Keith Conley described him as “a ghost.”
“I’ve said it over and over again, it is a challenge for law enforcement across the whole country. When [illegal immigrants] come into this country, they’re basically ghosts,” Conley said at a news conference. “They disappear. We have no identifiers. It’s challenging to even identify them through any of our databases.”
The 13-year-old victim told police that she previously knew Rodriguez-Salvador since he was one of her brother’s friends. The girl said that Rodriguez-Salvador told her he was driving her to the store, but when she noticed he was driving in the wrong direction, she told authorities that the suspect pulled out a knife. After arriving at his trailer park home, Rodriguez-Salvador allegedly forced himself on the girl.
“Anybody that uses a knife and overpowers a 13-year-old girl to rape them and then flees, that’s a coward,” Conley said.
The chief added that the date Rodriguez-Salvodor entered the U.S. is still unknown. The Department of Homeland Security is involved in the investigation.
Earlier this year, two illegal immigrants from Venezuela were charged in the murder of 12-year-old Houston girl, Jocelyn Nungary. Prosecutors allege that Johan Jose Rangel Martinez, 21, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26, “lured” Nungaray “under a bridge” where they “remained with her for over two hours, took her pants off, tied her up and killed her, then threw her body into the bayou.”
Illegal immigration has become a top concern for voters heading into the 2024 election as Customs and Border Protection has reported record numbers of migrant encounters at the southern border under the Biden administration.
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