The suspect who allegedly beheaded his ex-girlfriend on a street in California has been arrested, police said Friday.
Jose Rafael Solano Landaeta, 33, was arrested on homicide charges after he allegedly killed his ex-girlfriend Karina Castro, 27, outside her apartment around 11:50 a.m. Thursday during a domestic dispute in the Bay Area city of San Carlos.
According to the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, witnesses flagged down police during the attack, but when officers arrived, Castro was already dead. Local media outlets reported that the weapon was a sword, but authorities have only described it as a "stabbing instrument."
Castro is the mother of two children, one of whom is Landaeta’s 1-year-old daughter.
After the attack, Landaeta fled on foot two blocks away, but later returned to the crime scene unarmed, sheriff’s officials said. He was taken into custody and booked into jail, where he remains without bail.
“I miss her already," Martin Castro, Karina’s father, told KRON4. "My heart is empty without her. She was my best friend."
On Friday, he mourned at the scene of the murder. Several of Karina Castro’s friends also wrote tributes to her on Facebook.
Maricela Macedo, one of Castro's friends, told the San Francisco Chronicle that Castro had expressed fear for her life in an Instagram Live hours before she was killed.
“She was talking about her baby daddy,” Macedo told the newspaper. “She said that he had put a target on her.”
A representative for the app's parent company Meta did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment about the report.
San Carlos Mayor Sara McDowell said in a statement that the community remains shocked by the "tragic" murder.
"The City Council and its employees join our community in expressing our deepest condolences to the two young children who lost their mother in this horrific and senseless act of violence and to all the victims’ family, friends, and loved ones who suffer this loss as well," she said.
Meanwhile, a GoFundMe account has been set up for the Castro family.
"Her family is broken hearted by her gruesome murder," the GoFundMe’s description states. "She leaves behind two beautiful daughters ages 1 and 7."
The Community Foundation of San Carlos and the City of San Carlos also set up a contribution fund for Karina Castro’s children. According to the website, 100% of donations will go to her children.