Suspect in shooting rampage had been deported twice, officials say

The phone rang at 1:45 a.m. Saturday, jolting Mauro Marquez and his wife from their sleep.

It was their daughter, Janelle, calling from jail in Sacramento. She had only a minute to explain that she and her husband were in serious trouble.

“Luis killed a policeman and somebody else,” she told her father.

The Utah couple had just been charged in a shooting rampage that left two Northern California sheriff’s deputies dead, another injured and a civilian seriously wounded.

Authorities said 34-year-old Luis Enrique Monroy Bracamonte was the shooter. He was booked on charges of murder, attempted murder and carjacking. Authorities said that his weapons included an AR-15-type assault rifle.

Monroy, who is in the country illegally, was deported to Mexico in 1997 after his arrest and conviction in Arizona for possession of narcotics for sale, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He was arrested and sent back to Mexico a second time in 2001.

The agency has formally asked the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department to transfer Monroy to federal custody if he is released so that it can begin proceedings to remove him from the country again.

He was booked Saturday as Marcelo Marquez, the name that he gave police and that appeared on an identification card. But immigration officials said that was an alias.

His wife, Janelle Marquez Monroy, 38, was booked on attempted murder and carjacking charges. Authorities say she accompanied her husband for much of Friday’s six-hour rampage.

Initial reports said Janelle Monroy was carrying a gun in her purse, but Sgt. Lisa Bowman, a spokeswoman for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, said those accounts were wrong. Investigators, however, view her as an active participant in the crimes, she said.

Both suspects were being held without bail in Sacramento County Jail.

The assaults began when Sacramento County Sheriff’s Deputy Danny Oliver, who was on patrol with his partner, noticed a suspicious vehicle in the parking lot of a Motel 6 and went to check on it. Officials said Monroy fired from the car, striking Oliver, a 47-year-old father of two, in the forehead. He was later pronounced dead.

The couple fled and tried to carjack a motorist about a mile away, authorities said. When the driver, identified as Anthony Holmes, refused to turn over his keys, he was shot in the head.

The couple eventually took another stolen car to Auburn, where they were confronted by Placer County Sheriff’s Det. Michael David Davis Jr. and Deputy Jeff Davis. Authorities say Luis Monroy shot both men. Jeff Davis was wounded in the arm and Michael Davis, 42, later died.

Authorities say Luis Monroy ran from the scene and was later arrested in a residence.

As far as his father-in-law knew, his name had always been Luis Monroy and he worked as a house painter. But he didn’t know Monroy well.

When Monroy married Marquez’s daughter about 14 years ago in Arizona, her family did not attend. Her father said that he could not support her marrying a man they had never met.

A few years later, the couple moved to Utah, Mauro Marquez said.

“They wanted to be alone,” he said. “They disappeared.”

Eventually, Marquez and his wife started driving from their home in Chandler, Ariz., to Utah around Christmas each year to spend a couple of days with their daughter and son-in-law at their home in West Valley, a suburb of Salt Lake.

Monroy and his wife had no children.

He was pleasant but never talked much, his father-in-law said. If there was any problem with drugs or violence involving his son-in-law, Marquez and his wife never heard. They never saw guns in the house, he said.

Monroy was born in Sinaloa, Mexico, his father-in-law said, and most of his family still lived there.

A man who identified himself as the suspect’s brother told a Sacramento TV station that earlier in the week Monroy pulled a gun on him and demanded money. Hector Monroy told KXTV-TV that his brother was high on drugs and had a bag of weapons.

“He said he was in trouble,” Hector Monroy told the station. “He told me not to ask any questions and just give him money.”

Hector Monroy said his brother called him Friday while fleeing police.

“I asked him what he had done and he said he had killed a cop,” Monroy recalled.

In Northern California on Saturday, investigators were trying to track down scores of people who witnessed some part of Friday’s violence. Worried that news coverage could taint witness accounts, authorities decided not to release booking photos of the suspects, Bowman said.

Among those providing information were the suspects themselves. On Friday, just hours after the shooting ended, both spoke with detectives for hours, Bowman said.

She said the motive was still under investigation.

What drew them to Sacramento is also in question. The couple rented a room for at least one night in the Motel 6 where the rampage began, but they do not appear to have other ties to the region. Authorities said that however long they had been in Northern California, they had done nothing to attract the attention of law enforcement before Friday.

A public defender visited Luis Monroy on Saturday, but neither suspect has been assigned an attorney yet. Their first court appearance is set for Tuesday.

A large contingent of law enforcement officials escorted Davis’ body from the coroner’s office to a Placer County funeral home.

In Arizona, Mauro Marquez and his wife were trying to digest what happened.

Their daughter had called them Tuesday to say that she was planning on driving to Arizona for her mother’s birthday and that she would arrive on Saturday.

“There’s nothing we can do now,” Marquez said.

alan.zarembo@latimes.com

harriet.ryan@latimes.com