U.S. authorities have arrested a Los Angeles County man suspected in the killing of three sex workers in Tijuana, Mexico, last year.
Bryant Rivera of Downey, California, was taken into custody at around 5:30 a.m. Thursday morning. He's expected to be extradited to Mexico, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday. The Baja California Attorney General's Office states he is allegedly responsible for at least three femicides in the city of Tijuana that spanned between Sept. 2021 to Feb. 2022.
Femicide is a term used to describe the outbreak of violence against women in Mexico.
On Jan. 24, 2022, Rivera strangled a sex worker to death in a room at the Las Cascada Hotel connected to the Hong Kong Gentleman's Club in Zona Norte, a community in the northern part of the city, the complaint said.
Get top local stories in San Diego delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC San Diego's News Headlines newsletter.
He took his alleged victim, who had been working at the bar for around five months as a dancer and sex worker, into a room at the hotel. Security cameras at the hotel spotted the suspect and victim together before checking into the room, according to the complaint.
About an hour-and-a-half after the suspect and victim entered the room, the suspect exited the room alone. Thirteen minutes later, cameras at the San Ysidro Port of Entry showed the suspect giving his documents to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer as he crossed back into the U.S. The victim was found strangled to death in the room around 11 hours later, according to the complaint.
Three employees at the bar described the man who went into the room with the victim as having an acne-scarred face and a mole on the left side of his nose.
In November 2022, Baja California Attorney General Ricardo Carpio told Telemundo 20 they had connected the killings of three Tijuana sex workers to the same suspect, an unidentified U.S. citizen. Carpio said Mexican investigators knew who the suspect was and that he had crossed into the U.S.
The complaint details DMV records that show a driver's license was issued on Nov. 14, 2022, to a Bryant Rivera matching the description provided by Mexican authorities. The address on the license, a home in Downey, also matched an address obtained by Mexican investigators. Records also revealed that a red 2021 Chevy Silverado was registered to the same driver at the same address in Downey.
On June 6, 2023, U.S. Marshals went to the address in Downey and saw a man matching Rivera's description exit the home to grab things out of a red 2021 Chevy Silverado, according to the complaint.
Editor's note: A previous version of this story reported the suspect was a Riverside County resident when he is actually a Los Angeles County resident.
