‘Loved’ mom of 6 was fatally shot in 1998, Arizona cops say. Now a man is arrested
When 28-year-old Sarah Carr, a mother of six, was shot and killed nearly three decades ago, Arizona police had a suspect.
There was one problem.
“We knew who did it,” Phoenix Police Department Detective Dominick Roestenberg said in a video release. “We just didn’t have the name of the person.”
With only the man’s nickname, Carr’s case went cold, police said in an Oct. 24 news release.
But now, the 58-year-old man, who was living in Mexico, was arrested after he was identified as a suspect in Carr’s killing, police said.
“A lot of work was put into this investigation,” Roestenberg said. “We never give up. We keep trying.”
‘Who shot her?’
Following an argument, Carr was fatally shot at a Phoenix home just before midnight on July 9, 1998, police said.
“A girl got shot,” a caller can be heard telling a dispatcher in a portion of a 911 call shared in the video release. “Her name is Sarah. I don’t know her last name.”
“Who shot her?” the dispatcher asks on the 911 call.
“It’s a man,” the 911 caller says.
“I need to know who shot her,” the dispatcher says.
The 911 caller responds with only an “uh.”
The suspect fled, according to police.
Though the original detectives working the case knew the man’s nickname, they did not know his true identity, and Carr’s case went cold, police said.
Suspect identified
Using new technology, cold case detectives identified Javier Lorenzano-Nunez as a suspect, police said.
He lived in California after Carr’s death and then moved to Mexico, where he lived for the past decade, according to police.
Detectives submitted the case to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, which indicted Lorenzano-Nunez and issued a warrant for his arrest, police said.
After detectives approached the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Internal Affairs, it worked with Mexican law enforcement to find and arrest Lorenzano-Nunez, police said.
He was extradited to Phoenix and booked into jail on Oct. 23, police said.
“I think she’s dancing in heaven right now,” Carr’s sister, Peggy Carr, said in the video release. “I know she’s super proud of Garrett and all of her kids.”
Garrett Miller, Carr’s son, said his mother’s death inspired him to become a police officer in Austin, Texas.
“That feeling I had that I would never get justice is something I didn’t want other people to feel,” he said in the video release. “If I could give people a glimmer of hope that something could be done, or some type of closure, I would try and do so, because I don’t want them to feel the way I felt.”
Roestenberg described Carr as “a great person.”
“She was loved by many,” Roestenberg said.
This story was originally published October 29, 2024 at 5:59 PM with the headline "‘Loved’ mom of 6 was fatally shot in 1998, Arizona cops say. Now a man is arrested."
