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Police may have suspect in shooting of Phoenix teenager By MARK FREEMAN Victor Cruz and girlfriend Kati Bogart were two teenagers in love, with a baby due in five months and plans to marry despite having little money. Cruz's budding career as a Harry & David cake decorator showed promise, but Bogart says she feared the pressures to provide for his new family-to-be sent Cruz looking for money in the dark world of illegal drugs. "I told him that if he was doing drugs or selling drugs, then something was going to happen, like he was going to go to prison," said Bogart, 17, of Medford. Bogart's foreshadowing turned out worse than she feared Sept. 23 when Cruz was found shot to death in his car discovered hidden in brush off Old Military Road near Jacksonville. No one has been arrested in connection with Cruz's death, which occurred a week before the victim's 19th birthday. Now, a month later, detectives are still mum about Cruz's homicide amid swirling rumors in the local Hispanic community about who killed the Phoenix teen and why. Bogart and Cruz family members said detectives told them that they have a suspect in the slaying, but the man has fled to Mexico since Cruz's shooting. Jackson County Sheriff's Detective Eric Fox declined to confirm or deny that police have a suspect who has fled the country. "There's been a lot of rumors in the Hispanic community and the whole community about this case," Fox said. "There's been fingers pointed at five or six different people since I started investigating it." Cruz's body was found in a passenger seat of his father's 1996 Ford Probe parked on a secluded dirt road about 200 feet from the 3600 block of Old Military Road. Investigators said Cruz suffered a gunshot wound and there was no gun apparent there, leading police immediately to suspect foul play. An autopsy confirmed that it was a homicide, though authorities have yet to divulge where or how many times Cruz was shot. Neighbors in the Old Military Road area told police they heard two gunshots just a few seconds apart about 9:30 p.m. on Sept. 22, a Saturday, police said. Family members said they last saw Cruz, a high-school dropout who loved flashy cars, when he received a page that evening and then left, saying he was going cruising. Cruz's mother, Maria del Carmen Cruz, said Monday that investigators told her three weeks ago that the man police believe murdered her son had since fled to Mexico. Speaking through an interpreter, the elder Cruz said the family knows the person named by police, but she declined to reveal any details about the suspect. Maria del Carmen Cruz also denied that her son ever sold drugs. She said he was a good-hearted man who once wrote a school paper chastising criminals and drug-dealers as people who did not consider how their actions affected the community at large. Fox declined to reveal anything about any potential suspects, saying it could hamper the investigation. "Any information you're not getting from us," Fox said, "I'd consider to be rumor." But Fox did say that police interviewed several people who indicated that Cruz intended to marry Bogart, his girlfriend, and be a good father to their baby. Bogart said she was Cruz's girlfriend the past three years, first meeting him at a local teen club. They talked of marrying after the baby was born, and she feared his desire to provide for them sent Cruz looking to earn money in the drug trade - a charge he denied when she confronted him, Bogart said. Bogart, who is a South Medford High School junior, said she will learn Nov. 2 if her baby, due in February, is a boy or a girl. She intends to name the baby either Victor or Victoria, after its slain father, she said. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.