SANTA ANA, CA – Authorities have said a Southern Californian man, previously convicted of his mother’s murder as a teenager, has been arrested in Mexico. This comes a week after he abandoned a halfway house, thereby breaching his probation conditions.
Ike Nicholas Souzer, aged 20, was apprehended on Wednesday, in Rosarito– a city on the Mexican coast, after efforts by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexican officials. Souzer was subsequently returned to California.
During the week that Souzer was on the run, the district attorney’s office had warned the public about his dangerous and violent nature.
Souzer had already served jail time for the 2017 stabbing death of his mother, when he was 13. Following a brief sentence for a recent vandalism conviction, he was released from custody on March 20. The judge at his trial also sentenced him to two years of probation.
Previous instances record Souzer’s escape from a halfway house in 2022. He had been allowed to shift from jail to a Santa Ana halfway house, where he later detached his electronic tracking device and fled, eventually being recaptured.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer strongly suggested that Souzer should have been dealt more severe punishments, and laid the blame on the supervising judges of his trials.
Souzer’s conviction came after he voluntarily manslaughtered his mother. However, his defense attorney pleaded self-defense and shared that the teenager had been a victim of years of abuse, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
Additionally, Souzer’s criminal record consists of charges including three attacks on correctional officers, possession of a shank, and graffiti on a freeway underpass.
Further back in 2019, Souzer had also managed to escape from a juvenile detention facility.