Formerly missing teen girl ‘murdered man she met online’
A teenage girl who was the subject of an Amber Alert has been charged with murdering a man she lured online.
Natalie Navarro, 17, as well as her boyfriend and apparent accomplice Yordy Martinez, 21, face capital murder charges in the shooting death of 21-year-old Arturo Pena in late August.
Navarro is also accused of being ‘in the course of committing and attempting’ to rob Pena when she allegedly shot him, according to the indictment earlier this week.
Investigators believe that Navarro met Pena online, said the Garland Police Department.
Navarro told cops ‘she had spoken to Yordy once before online but had never met him in person the night of the actual murder,’ police spokesperson Richard Maldonado told Fox News Digital.
However, authorities believe she was not telling the whole truth.
Cops suspect that Navarro met Pena in person two weeks before the shooting and was trying to set him up, FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth reported. Pena was reported missing on August 27.
Navarro disappeared from an apartment complex in the Far East Dallas neighborhood and The Dallas Police Department issued an Amber Alert for her on September 1, only a few days after Pena’s body was discovered at Audubon Park in Garland, Texas.
Cops found Navarro a few hours after her Amber Alert was issued, near the border with Mexico.
Martinez remains at large.
Pena’s girlfriend, Veronica Lopez, wrote on a GoFundMe page for him that ‘our angel was viciously taken from his family and loved ones’.
She wrote that she could not say too much because his death is still under investigation, but that, ‘When I was praying, I heard a still voice say, “I’m home. I’m home.”‘
As of Tuesday evening, the GoFundMe page had raised more than $3,300.
Navarro faces charges as a judge determined that another teenage girl, Kaitlyn Coones, 17, will be tried as an adult for allegedly killing her boyfriend’s mother after giving him five hours to do get rid of her himself.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.