LOWELL — More than 3,000 miles from home and more than a month after he became a wanted man, a Lowell teen was arrested on a warrant charging him with first-degree murder as he boarded a bus in Sacramento, Calif., early yesterday morning.
Tony Heng, 17, was arrested by Sacramento police about 4 a.m. at a bus that would have taken him to southern California, according to Jessica Venezia Pastore, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Gerard Leone.
He is charged with the June 19 slaying of Juan Ferrer, 19, of Lawrence, who was gunned down at Chapel and Union streets in Lowell’s Back Central neighborhood as he visited friends.
The killing claimed the life of a young father who had been working toward a GED.
The arrest marked the culmination of an investigation that lasted five months and stretched thousands of miles through at least three states.
“I applaud all the law-enforcement agencies who participated in this investigation, which led to the capture of one of the suspects we feel is responsible for this senseless crime,” Lowell police Superintendent Kenneth Lavallee said last night.
Police were first called to Chapel and Union streets on June 19 about 2:30 a.m., and found Ferrer suffering from gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at Lowell General Hospital a short time later.
Police investigated but made no arrests until Sept. 2, when they arrested Jimmy Kan, 19, of Lowell, with help from the U.S. Marshall’s Service and the State Police Violent Fugitive Task Force.
Kan was charged with accessory after the fact of murder because police say he helped Heng flee from the scene of the crime, and later disposed of evidence.
Kan was arraigned in September and is being held on $20,000 cash bail as he awaits trial.
After that arrest, Connecticut State Police helped investigators search for Heng in Connecticut, and the search later stretched to California.
Heng was being held without bail in the Sacramento County Juvenile Hall last night, pending his arraignment in Sacramento Superior Court tomorrow.
How soon he is returned to Massachusetts will depend on whether he waives rendition proceedings in California.
Ferrer was born in Puerto Rico, but grew up in Lowell until his early teens when his family moved to Lawrence, his sister told The Sun shortly after his death.
He was the father of a girl who was 2 months old when he died, and had also been a father figure to his girlfriend’s 2-year-old daughter.
“He was just a good dad,” Ferrer’s girlfriend told The Sun. That woman did not want to be identified, but in June told The Sun that her 2-year-old daughter had been asking for the man who took care of her like she was his own.
“I told her he went away,” the woman said.
Ferrer worked cleaning machinery at a factory in Haverhill, and had never been in serious trouble with the law.
Ferrer’s sister, Keyshla Ferrer, said he was in Lowell the night of his death to attend a barbecue at a friend’s house. He left behind a large family in Lawrence and many friends in Lowell.
Ferrer had also been a familiar face at the United Teen Equality Center in Lowell, where he had spent time as he prepared to try and get his GED.
Ferrer’s family could not be reached for comment last night.
Now that Heng is in police custody, police have made arrests in all five of the murders that have occurred in Lowell so far this year.
