Man charged 24 years after 19-year-old killed in Durham

An arrest was made last week in a decades-old cold case in Durham.

Family members waited 24 years for an arrest after 19-year-old Jesus Enrique Garza was shot and killed in September 1999 while sitting in a car on North Miami Boulevard.

Days after the shooting, the Durham Police Department obtained a warrant charging Saturnino Gutierrez-Garcia with the murder.

Gutierrez-Garcia, now 46, was found in Mount Airy on Oct. 7, 2023, where he was living. The Surry County Sheriff’s Office arrested Gutierrez-Garcia, who was taken to the Durham County Jail and held without bond.

Garza's family told WRAL News they waited years for a break in the case, but their lives will never be the same.

"He was so happy, so full of joy," said Azalea Garza Oroczo, who describes her brother as a kind person.

The family moved from Mexico to Durham in the early 1990s.

"He would bring people home and expect my mom to feed them -- all his friends," Oroczo laughed.

Oroczo told WRAL News her life changed forever on Sept. 16, 1999.

"That's where I stop having pictures of him," she said. "I was home. It was the Mexican Independence Day of all days."

Oroczo got a call from one of her brother's friends who told her he was shot sitting in a car on North Miami Boulevard.

"There was a bunch of police. All I could see was my brother in his car," Oroczo recalled. "I'm still living that moment. I never got over that."

Family members told WRAL News some of them had given up hope of getting justice.

The news of the arrest of Gutierrez-Garcia was a relief, they said, but it has also has reopened old wounds.

"I don't think we'll ever be able to have complete closure," Oroczo said.

The memory of Jesus Enrique, known as "Tucho" to his family and friends, lives on in more than just the photos from his sister's album.

"When we came here, the population of Mexicans was very slim," Oroczo said. "So we worked along with El Centro Hispano."

The family helped develop a program for young men, and Garza was one of the youth leaders.

"He would DJ at the parties, we would do events in the community," Oroczo said.

Oroczo said her brother was a person who advocated for his community, especially young people.

"I think he would be thrilled to see we have such an influence, [that] the Mexican community has contributed," she said.

Anyone with any information in this homicide is asked to call Investigator R. Armstrong at 919-560-4440 ext. 29325 or Crime Stoppers at 919-683-1200.