By Jamey Boyum
TITUS COUNTY, TX (KLTV) - A man who allegedly beat a woman to death and sent another man to a hospital in critical condition was found dead by apparent suicide, according to the Titus County Sheriff’s Office
The murder happened in Winfield which is about eight miles west of Mount Pleasant in Titus County.
27-year old Edgar Javier Martinez Sierra hung himself after what the Titus County Sheriff is calling a crime of passion.
According to Titus County Sheriff Tim Ingram, Maria De Jesus Castro Deleon was beaten to death with a carpentry tool that looked like a section of pipe. 24-year old David Landeverde Diaz was also beaten and is in critical condition. Sierra, the alleged perpetrator, is dead.
“The suspect is actually the one that committed suicide so there’s no one armed out that anybody needs to fear. So we’re just wrapping up the loose ends now to absolutely prove that he is the one that did it,” Ingram said.
It happened early Saturday morning at a house on First Street in Winfield. Sierra had been babysitting several children of a woman who had come into town for a child’s birthday party. The woman went out, Sierra and the kids all went to bed.
“For some reason, the young lady with the kids didn’t want to come that night with the others when they got through partying, which is what we can gather about one o’clock Saturday morning, so the victim in this was going to go home and be with the kids,” Ingram explained.
The sheriff says David Diaz went with her, and Sierra and Diaz had words with each other about Deleon’s affections in the past.
“When our suspect got up to go to work Saturday morning, found the two together in his living there on the couch, all we can gather is that he just lost it because he was pretty infatuated with this girl,” Ingram stated.
The Sheriff says Sierra went outside for the tool.
“He came back in with the tool and then beat both victims with the intent to kill both of them,” Ingram said.
Diaz survived the beating. The children’s mother came home around seven am and slept in their room for a few hours.
“She woke up a couple hours later around 9-9:15. She went in and saw the two together, and said she was yelling at them to get up, hey my kids are about to get up, y’all need to get up. And that’s when she realized they weren’t moving then noticed something bad was wrong. Saw the blood,” the sheriff relayed.
She ran to a neighbor’s house and called 911 around 9 a.m. Saturday. At the time Sierra was nowhere to be found. The woman got her children out of the house before they saw anything.
There was an active search for the suspect over the weekend until Sierra’s car was spotted Monday morning at an empty house Sierra was helping to remodel in Mount Vernon. SWAT was called in, and about 9 am Monday morning they entered the house and discovered Sierra, who Sheriff Ingram believes committed suicide Saturday morning.
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