The Killings of Ramon Escobar

Ramon Alberto Escobar was born on June 5, 1971, in El Salvador. He grew up in poverty shaped in part by the aftermath of the Football War of 1969 and the civil conflict that defined that country in subsequent years. In the mid-1980s, he illegally emigrated to the United States. He was arrested in 1988 and deported. He returned in the early 1990s and settled with relatives in Houston, where he worked as a day laborer and developed a criminal record involving burglary, trespassing, and theft. He was convicted on a burglary charge and served five years in a Texas state prison. Between 1997 and 2011, he was deported from the United States six times. Each time, he returned.

In January 2017, Escobar won an appeal of his final deportation case before an immigration court and was granted permanent legal residency. He moved into the Houston home of his uncle Rogelio Escobar and aunt Dina Escobar at their address on Prudence Drive in southwest Houston. He worked as a day laborer. In November 2017 and February 2018, he was arrested twice more for trespassing and theft but paid fines and was not tried. People who knew him described him as non-violent. His friends and acquaintances spoke positively of him. Nothing in his known history predicted what came next.

On August 26, 2018, Escobar beat his 65-year-old uncle Rogelio to death inside their shared home using an old police baton. He told investigators later that he killed Rogelio because he felt disrespected. Two days later, he hid under clothes in Dina Escobar's minivan when she drove out to search for her missing brother. He attacked her from behind with the baton during a car stop, struggled with her, and pressed his knee to her chest until she stopped breathing. He dumped both bodies in separate dumpsters. Their skeletal remains were found together in a landfill outside Houston two months later. He stole Dina's van, drove to Galveston, and burned it on a beach.

Houston Police investigators questioned Escobar about his relatives' disappearances in late August. He was released for lack of evidence. He then fled Texas and drove 1,500 miles to California, arriving in the Los Angeles area approximately one week before the attacks there began. He arrived without resources and was homeless in the area when the killings started.

Between September 8 and September 24, 2018, Escobar carried out a sustained assault campaign across Los Angeles and Santa Monica. He used a baseball bat and bolt cutters to bludgeon victims, primarily homeless individuals sleeping on streets and beaches. Surveillance footage captured him ransacking the pockets and belongings of victims after attacking them. He told investigators he killed some victims because they irritated him, were disrespectful to law enforcement, or because he needed money. Five more people died. Seven others were severely injured and survived. His final attack came on September 24 on a street in downtown Los Angeles, where witnesses saw him beat Jorge Martinez over the head with a baseball bat. Police arrived minutes later and arrested Escobar with the baseball bat and bolt cutters still in his car.