Luis Miguel Perez, 34, a confirmed MS-13 gang member and El Salvador national who has been deported from the United States seven times, is now in custody following a seven-hour manhunt that began Monday afternoon, Feb. 24, on CR 5740 in the Colony Ridge communities south of Plum Grove. Perez was apprehended shortly before 10 p.m. at a property off CR 2340, just three miles north of the prisons in Dayton, and about 5 miles from the crime scene, according to Capt. David Meyers, a spokesperson for the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office. He was taken into custody without incident by members of the Liberty County Special Response Team. Authorities were led to his location after a woman reported a suspicious man in her driveway asking for drinks and a ride. “She gave him some Gatorade and a Coke. Then she told him to go to another house up the road where the family spoke Spanish. While he was heading that way, she called 911 to report him as a suspicious person. That’s when she found out he was a murder suspect,” Meyers said. Law enforcement officers converged on a trailer down the road, where they spotted Perez inside a family’s home. The family came outside, and the SRT moved in to take him into custody. Perez is expected to be charged with murder in the coming hours and will be transported to the Liberty County Jail.
