(Source: Houston Police) Noel Sosa-Ruiz
CAL SAL, BAHAMAS (CBSMiami) – What started as a rescue call from a boater stranded near an island in the Bahamas turned bizarre Friday after the stranded boater shot himself in the chest as Coast Guard rescuers arrived. The boat had been stolen from Key Largo, and the man aboard was wanted for shooting and killing his lover at a Houston dental office last week.
41-year old Noel Sosa-Ruiz had been on the run since October 28th, when police say he walked into Smiley Dental and Orthodontics in Houston and shot 29-year-old Yodani Cruz-Rojas multiple times. Cruz-Rojas was the mother of three children, and worked in the office.
Cruz-Rojas died of her injuries, and Sosa-Ruiz fled, apparently to South Florida.
The US Coast Guard in Miami said they responded Friday to distress flares spotted by a US Customs and Border Patrol plane on patrol near the Bahamas. They reported the small boat, just 20 feet long, appeared to be dead in the water, with one person aboard.
At this point, nobody knew a dangerous fugitive was aboard.
As a cutter tried to reach the boat, a plane from the Miami Coast Guard Air Station flew to the boat’s position, and dropped a radio, raft, food and a de-watering pump to the vessel. Coast Guard officials said Sosa-Ruiz only retrieved the radio and pump, and used gasoline from the pump to get his engine started.
Sosa-Ruiz traveled south for while, the Coast Guard said, and eventually ran out of gas. A private boat, the Four Nabucco, spotted the boat and contacted the Coast Guard. When that boat passed along the disabled boat’s registration numbers, the Coast Guard learned they were dealing with a stolen boat, but did not know who was aboard.
According to the Coast Guard, the Cutter Nantucket finally arrived at the boat’s location about 6 p.m. Friday. As the Cutter approached, crew members watched Sosa-Ruiz fire a single shot into his chest. When crew from the Nantucket boarded the boat, they found Sosa-Ruiz dead.
The boat was towed back to the Coast Guard base in Key West Saturday.
“Through close coordination with our partner agencies, we were able to apprehend and keep an extremely dangerous fugitive from fleeing the country,” sand Capt. Pat DeQuattro, Coast Guard Sector Key West commander.
The suicide was the end of a manhunt which began after last week’s shooting. Houston Police said Rojas was the mother of two of Ruiz’s children, and that she and Ruiz were in a relationship. They had recently moved from Florida to Houston.
The three children were taken into state custody after the shooting.
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