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.
It is said he managed to get from Texas to Kissimmee, Florida where his sister lived. He then drove her van to the Rivas’, where he stole their center console boat and took off for Cuba.
When Coast Guard officers arrived at the boat, which had run out of gas and was just drifting, the boarding team approached the vessel in a small boat. Upon boarding the stolen boat, the team confirmed that Sosa-Ruiz was dead.
A .40 caliber Berretta was retrieved and it believed to be the gun he used on himself.
Sosa-Ruiz came to the U.S four years ago. He was smuggled into U.S. waters before jumping from the boat and swimming to shore.
His body is now in the custody of the Monroe County Medical Examiner’s Office.
