2nd suspect arrested in fatal shooting of U.S. citizen in Sonora

The suspect, identified only as Jonathan Antonio, also known as “El Galleta,” was arrested Feb. 11 along with six others during five searches carried out simultaneously in Altar, Sonora, the Sonora Attorney General’s Office said in a news release. The searches also netted weapons, including five long guns; tactical vests; narcotics; and ammunition.

The state Attorney General’s Office had offered an award of 500,000 pesos — about $24,000 — to locate El Galleta, but his arrest stemmed from law enforcement’s own intelligence work, a spokesman for the office said. The Feb. 11 operation, which the office said dealt “a heavy blow to the criminal group in Altar,” was carried out in partnership with Mexican Navy and Secretariat of National Defense, which oversees the Army and Air Forces.

Quets, a 31-year-old U.S. Marine Corps veteran, was gunned down on Oct. 18 while driving through a dangerous part of northwest Sonora, near Altar. Quets was heading to Rocky Point with friends, after having crossed into Mexico through Nogales.

The attack came after Quets, who was driving his 1996 Ford F-250, did not stop at an unauthorized highway checkpoint, manned by an armed group, a state official said.

Quets’ vehicle was initially attacked while driving west on Sonora Highway 43, east of where it intersects with Federal Highway 2 in the town of Altar. Quets fled in the vehicle from the initial gunfire and made it to Highway 2, just west of Altar, but the criminal group pursued him and caught up with him there, according to the Sonora AG’s office.

Quets’ family told the Arizona Daily Star in October that he was shot from behind while in the driver’s seat and was struck in the heart. His two companions, who were Mexican nationals, were uninjured, they said.

Mexico’s Federal Highway 2 and Highway 43 both pass through a volatile region of northwest Sonora marked by territorial battles between criminal groups that have escalated since 2023.

The U.S. State Department doesn’t allow its employees to travel in the area where Quets was killed. The off-limits “triangular region” spans west from the Mariposa U.S. Port of Entry in Nogales; east of Sonoyta, Sonora; and north of Altar, Sonora, on Highway 2. It encompasses the same area where three other U.S. citizens or residents have also been killed by gunfire since December 2023.

The State Department only recommends traveling to Rocky Point via Federal Highway 8, from Sonoyta, across the U.S.-Mexico border from Lukeville.

The agency recommends stopping at all checkpoints, whether or not one is sure the stop is manned by legitimate law enforcement.

The Star reported in November that Sonoran authorities had charged one suspect in Quets’ death. The additional suspect arrested this week, El Galleta, was also charged with the Jan. 13 disappearance of a still-missing man, identified as “Rodrigo,” from an Altar neighborhood. The suspect, along with an armed group, allegedly “violently entered” the man’s home at night and kidnapped him, the AG’s office said.