Background: The area of Watchlight Court in Howard County, Maryland, where police say the victim was killed (WJZ/YouTube). Inset: Darwin Carcamo-Santiago (Howard County Police Department).
A woman in Maryland expressed shock to learn that her neighbor is accused of strangling his girlfriend to death while the neighbor sat oblivious on the other side of the wall that divided their homes.
Darwin Carcamo-Santiago, 24, is charged with first- and second-degree murder in the death of 35-year-old Esmeralda Perez-Mendez, the Howard County Police Department announced.
On Sunday, "an acquaintance of the suspect" was at Carcamo-Santiago's home on the 9000 block of Watchlight Court in Columbia, Maryland. The area lies some 20 miles southwest of Baltimore.
This person was in the defendant's bedroom when they found Perez-Mendez dead, according to police. "The victim suffered injuries consistent with strangulation," and detectives believed she was killed overnight from Saturday into Sunday, police said.
Carcamo-Santiago was nowhere to be found; police believe he had fled the area.
The suspect's neighbor, Elizabeth Chestnut, said four or five men rented the home and that all of them worked in a restaurant owned by the landlord. She was incredulous that no one noticed anything before the victim's body was found.
"They all came home Saturday night and went to work Sunday morning like nothing happened," Chestnut told local CBS affiliate WJZ. "So that's a little disturbing that something happened with all those people living in close quarters and nobody heard anything."
Chestnut — who has reportedly lived in the neighborhood for more than 50 years — said she spoke with Carcamo-Santiago on Saturday and "he was very polite and very respectful."
She added to area ABC affiliate WMAR that she never heard a sound in the overnight hours until police showed up the next day. "Sent chills up my spine that I'm downstairs watching TV and on the other side of the wall somebody's getting killed," she said.
Carcamo-Santiago was arrested in Texas on Monday. The other people who lived in the home moved out that day.
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