Police arrested a 24-year-old neighbor Wednesday night in the slaying of 13-year-old Elizabeth Villa in Arlington.
Villa’s mother found the teenager was not breathing Monday morning in the family’s east Arlington apartment when she went to wake her up.
Rodrigo Sanchez apparently snuck into the girl’s apartment and strangled her, police said.
Sanchez lives in the same apartment building as Villa, but was a stranger to the victim and her family, police said.
His fingerprints were found at the crime scene and led to his arrest, said Arlington police Lt. Blake Miller.
The victim was sexually assaulted, Miller said.
Villa was a seventh-grader at Hutcheson Junion High.
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Sanchez was being held on $1 million bond on a capital murder charge.
He has previously been arrested in Arlington for Class C violations.
