Eutimio Osvaldo Aispuro
SANTA BARBARA — Eutimio Osvaldo Aispuro, a 24-year-old Mexican citizen who was at one time a Santa Barbara resident, may have thought that assuming a new false identity and hiding out in Mexico would insulate him from a charge of murder in the 2010 homicide of Samuel Bautista Justo.
The error of his thinking became apparent on June 4th when the long arm of the law finally caught up to him in the Arizona desert when he was attempting to return to U.S. territory.
Victim Samuel Bautista Justo
According to Santa Barbara Police Department Public Information Officer Sgt. Riley Harwood, the corpse of Justo was discovered following “a call to check the welfare of a tenant” within a downtown Santa Barbara apartment complex. Responding officers discovered Justo dead, “the result of being stabbed multiple times.”
Not long afterward, Aispuro was identified as the principal suspect, but detectives quickly discovered he had fled to Mexico well before the body of Justo was discovered.
An arrest warrant for Aispuro was issued soon thereafter. Throughout the following half-dozen years, SBPD detectives, working in concert with both U.S. Federal authorities and the Mexican government, worked energetically to secure Aispuro’s arrest in Mexico and his extradition to the U.S.
As luck would have it, while those efforts continued to be made, Aispuro was picked up on June 4th by the U.S. Border Patrol attempting to re-enter the U.S. as he traversed the Arizona desert.
He initially gave the Border Patrol officers a false name, but through fingerprint analysis he was property identified as a fugitive wanted for murder in Santa Barbara. Authorities at the Pima County Jail in Tucson, Arizona notified SBPD detectives that they had Aispuro in custody.
On June 20th, he was transported back to Santa Barbara and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on a no-bail warrant for murder.
Photos: Santa Barbara Police Department, Santa Barbara County Jail Booking
