An Instagram post helped police apprehend an 18-year-old murder suspect on the Texas “10 Most Wanted” list, according to authorities.
Christopher Ricardo Gonzalez was arrested early Tuesday morning in Los Angeles after broadcasting a live video of himself on Instagram showing off an assortment of guns, the L.A. Times first reported.
Dallas police had been pursuing Mr. Gonzalez since last month in connection with several charges including murder, aggravated robbery and engaging in organized crime, and recently received a break in their case after he streamed a video on the Facebook-owned, social media platform, the report said.
Investigators in Dallas were able to glean GPS coordinates associated with the Instagram video and used that information to place Mr. Gonzalez about 1,400 miles away in southern California, according to the Times. They shared the location data with law enforcement counterparts in Los Angeles, who in turn deployed a team of undercover officers tasked with taking him into custody, ABC 7 reported.
The Los Angeles Police Department used the GPS coordinates to locate a rented black Chevrolet SUV connected to Mr. Gonzalez, but he took off in the vehicle and a chase ensued, the reports said.
The SUV ultimately crashed in a utility pole in the neighborhood of Woodland Hills, prompting Mr. Gonzalez and another man to flee the vehicle, police said afterwards. Mr. Gonzalez was located by a police dog shortly before 2 a.m. Tuesday and the other man was found about an hour later, authorities told the ABC affiliate.
“I started hearing the suspect screaming,” Woodland Hills homeowner Todd Melnik told ABC 7. “They called the dog off of him and then they ordered him to crawl backwards from inside the bushes next to my fence, backwards onto my front lawn.”
“I thought there was going to be a shooting on my front lawn, honest to God. It was a really dramatic moment,” Mr. Melnik said told the news station.
Both men were treated at a local hospital for minor injuries, and Mr. Gonzalez is expected to be extradited to Texas, according to police.
Police said they believe that Mr. Gonzalez, also known as “Little Chris,” is a member of the infamous Bloods gang and responsible for a slew of aggravated home invasions beginning late last year as well as the murder of Horace Davis, a 42-year-old Dallas man found shot to death in his car last August. Authorities ultimately recovered evidence from the murder scene linking Mr. Gonzalez to the crime, and he was placed on the Texas “10 Most Wanted” list on Aug. 21.
Instagram boasts about 700 million monthly active users, making it one of the most successful social media platforms on the internet. It was purchased by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion in cash and stock.
Facebook received roughly 50,000 separate requests for user data from U.S. law enforcement agencies in 2016 and provided information about 80 percent of the time, according to its own accounting. It did not immediately return an email seeking comment on its involvement in this week’s arrest.
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