Police are seeking the public’s help identifying two “persons of interest” in the investigation into the deaths of a pregnant teenager and her boyfriend, whose bodies were found in a car in San Antonio this week.
San Antonio police shared a video Thursday and said in a statement that they are seeking information about two people seen in it — one who was driving a dark pickup truck with a bed cover and the other who was driving a silver Kia Optima that belonged to one of the victims.
Before she was found dead, Savanah Soto, 18, had last been seen in the Optima on Friday afternoon in Leon Valley, an enclave in northwest San Antonio. At the time, officials said her disappearance posed a “credible threat” to her “health and safety.”
Police found the bodies of Soto and her boyfriend, Matthew Guerra, 22, in Guerra’s Optima on Tuesday afternoon.
The 79-second video released Thursday shows a pickup heading in one direction, while the Optima pulls into the parking lot from the opposite direction and parks near it. People get out of both vehicles and appear to talk to each other before driving away, the video shows.
Police said the video was taken from a location near where Soto's and Guerra's bodies were found, about 3 miles from where Soto was last seen Friday.
Police Chief William McManus said Thursday the pickup in the video is a Chevrolet Silverado. He added that detectives are combing through additional security videos from places Soto and Guerra would frequent, as well as digging into cellphone records and social media posts.
“Detectives are doing everything that they can do to solve this case,” McManus said at a news conference.
He called the slayings a “heinous act” and “unspeakable.”
The deaths are being investigated as a capital murder, McManus said. While it's possible Soto and Guerra died in a murder-suicide, he said, “we’ve kind of gotten past that point right now, unless we get evidence that would lead us to believe otherwise.”
Soto and Guerra died from gunshot wounds to the head, the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office said Thursday. Soto’s death was a homicide. Guerra’s manner of death is pending, according to the medical examiner.
Their bodies may have been in the Optima for several days before they were found, McManus said.
An unborn child was also killed, San Antonio police said.
Leon Valley police said that when Soto disappeared, she was past her delivery date and that her family contacted San Antonio police because she missed “an essential medical appointment.”
Soto’s family told NBC affiliate WOAI of San Antonio that she disappeared the day before labor was scheduled to be induced.
Anyone with information about the people in the video or the pickup is asked to call police. Tipsters can remain anonymous, police said.
