Sources familiar with the investigation tell San Antonio news outlets that no gun was found in the car where the bodies of pregnant teen Savanah Soto and her boyfriend, Matthew Guerra, were found on Tuesday.
According to WOAI, the 22-year-old Guerra’s body was found in the backset of his Kia Optima, while Soto, 18, was in the front passenger seat with a child carrier on her lap. Guerra’s cell phone was also not in the car. Both were shot to death.
Police began looking for Soto when she missed an appointment on Saturday to have labor induced, but she had not been seen since Friday, as CrimeOnline reported. The couple’s desperate parents launched an appeal on Monday, and on Tuesday, the car was found in the parking lot of an apartment complex in northwest San Antonio.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus called the crime scene “perplexing” and “complex,” and on Wednesday, police said they were investigation the deaths as capital murder crimes.
Meanwhile, Guerra’s father and stepmother, Gabriel and Raquel Guerra, told WOAI that they had difficulty filing a missing persons report on their son. First, they said, they were routed to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, while Soto’s family, who live in San Antonio, was sent to the San Antonio Police Department. Ultimately, the Guerras were able to file a police report in Leon Valley, where their son and Soto lived.
“I was told that they were trying to get the three agencies — all the information they had — to combine them into one report,” said Gabriel Guerra.
Guerra said he asked Leon Valley police about getting a court order use his son’s cell phone location date, but a detective told him it wasn’t urgent enough.
“[The detective] basically said, ‘They’re adults and if they want to disappear. they can disappear,’” Daniel Guerra recounted. “And, again, I reminded them, the the baby is overdue, has been overdue – they missed the due date. And to me, that’s a life threatening. I mean, there should have been more urgency.”
Leon Valley Police are now referring all questions to the San Antonio Police Department, which is handling the murder investigation.
Complicating the investigation is the difficult relationship between Guerra and Soto: He was on probation after assaulting Soto last Christmas and was due in court on January 9. According to court records, he was allowed contact with her only if said contact wasn’t “harmful” or “injurious.”
But the reports that no gun would indicate that the deaths are not considered a murder-suicide, and Guerra’s parents were certain he had no part in it.
“They were inseparable. Was it a perfect relationship? No, but she definitely was not a prisoner there,” Gabriel Guerra told KENS.
Still, Guerra’s probation, initially set to expire next June, was extended until February 2025 after he was arrested on unrelated charges that included unlawful carrying of a weapon, evading arrest in a vehicle, and reckless driving.
Savannah Soto’s boyfriend, Matthew Guerra, was still on probation for assaulting Savannah last Christmas. Court records show he was permitted to have contact with her so long as it wasn’t harmful or injurious.
Guerra was due for court on Jan. 9 for the other cases. pic.twitter.com/80WzQOfLVq
— Mariah Medina (@MMedinanews) December 26, 2023
“He didn’t hang around the best crowd,” Gabriel told the outlet, but said he believed his son was going to make a change once he became a dad.
Meanwhile, Soto’s mother told KENS she felt the murders “had something to do with him and things that he was doing, not my daughter.”
“My daughter just was there with him and they didn’t want … they didn’t want someone to say what happened, somebody that’s going to say it’s so-and-so or this is what he looked like. She just was there at the wrong time,” she said.
Cordova also said Guerra had previously been abusive to her daughter and that she had told her to get out of the relationship.
“She was hard-headed, she wouldn’t listen,” she said. “But I think this time she was going to leave him already. That’s what I’m hearing.”
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[Featured image: Savanah Soto/Texas Department of Public Safety]
