[dropcap size=big]L[/dropcap]os Angeles police say the man apprehended on Monday morning in connection with recent brutal baseball bat attacks on sleeping homeless men arrived in L.A. from Houston, in early September shortly before launching a spree of seven brutal assaults over a two-week period that left three dead and two others clinging to life.
Ramon Escobar, 47, had also been deported six times between 1997 and 2011, ICE told the L.A. Times. The development turns the case into a potential lightning rod for conservative media, which often latch onto cases of illegal immigrants committing violent crimes to fuel racist hysteria directed at undocumented people.
Despite major outlying cases, such as the recent Mollie Tibbetts killing in Iowa, undocumented immigrants overall commit less crimes than citizens and studies suggest immigrants help bring down crime in communities where they settle.
At a news conference on Tuesday, LAPD stepped back from calling Escobar suspect a “serial killer.”
He allegedly beat to death two homeless men with a baseball bat while they slept in downtown Los Angeles on Sept. 16 and a third man under the Santa Monica pier on Sep. 18, said LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division Capt. Billy Hayes at LAPD headquarters. Two other men remain in the hospital in critical condition. Police said they recovered a pair of bolt cutters which may have also been used in the deadly assaults.