FRESNO, CA (KMJ) – Fresno Police make an arrest on Monday in the murder of a transgender person killed in Central Fresno back in 2015.
It was back on July 23rd, around 2:20 in the morning that Kenton Haggard was stabbed to death on Blackstone and Cornell Avenues.
Surveillance video shows 66 year-old Haggard, wearing a dress, and approaching an SUV that had stopped, to talk to the occupants. The passenger then reaches out and with a knife stabs Haggard in the neck – the fatal blow.
Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer says 38-year-old Richard Joseph Lopez was arrested Monday, February 5th in the case.
Lopez was already in custody in Fresno on an elder abuse charge and auto theft from a crime in 2017 in Auberry, last November.
After Lopez was sentenced to three years in that case, the Fresno County DA’s Office was just waiting to arrest him on the murder charge.
Chief Dyer says Lopez has a history of auto theft, assault with a deadly weapon and drug possession.
While they don’t have a motive for the killing, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer says witness statements and evidence make them believe Haggard was killed for being transgender, and the murder charge may possibly be enhanced with a hate crime.
45 year old Refugio Angel Cedillo was considered an accessory to the crime. He was suspected of cleaning the SUV, but Chief Dyer says they learned that he had died in a motorcycle accident before charges could be brought against him.
Chief Dyer is not yet naming the driver of the SUV, pending the prosecution of Lopez, but he did say that Lopez bought the car from a man who lives in Oregon.
Click below to listen to the report by KMJ’s Liz Kern.
