A Texas Latino was on the run after becoming the lead suspect in a Texas murder case, but with U.S. Coast Guard officers hot on his trail Friday, he chose to commit suicide rather than go in to custody.
Noel Sosa-Ruiz, 41, reportedly stole a friend’s boat Friday, leaving only a note that said he needed to escape because of a warrant against him. He left from Key West, and is said to have been heading for Cuba.
According to Magaly Rivas, the boat’s owner, the note Sosa-Ruiz left said in Spanish, “I am condemned to die because I killed my wife and I have to leave. Forgive me.
After the crew of Customs and Border Protection Dash-8 aircraft reported that two red flares had been fired from a center console vessel, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter was called in. As the cutter approached what they thought was a stranded boater about 11 miles off the coast of the Bahama’s Cay Sal Island, Sosa-Ruiz, shot himself in the chest on the 21-foot boat he’d stolen. He was only about 20 miles from Cuba’s northern coast.
In October, a warrant was issued for Sosa-Ruiz by Houston police, after he allegedly killed his 29-year-old common-law wife Yodanis Cruz-Rojas. She was the mother of the couple’s two children. Police say Sosa-Ruiz walked into the dental office where Cruz-Rojas worked on October 27th and fatally shot her, then ran.
