In response to an open records request, the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office released an offense report on Monday concerning the murder of Katrina Castillo, 20.
Castillo was found dead on February 5 in the backyard of a home in the 4200 block of East 2nd Street. Xavier Garcia, 20, of Lubbock was arrested a day later. He was found in Castillo’s car near the corner of 50th Street and Bangor Avenue.
Nearly everything in the report was blacked out. Two sentences remained in the clear.
“I was dispatched to 4217 East 2nd St. In reference to a check welfare,” an officer wrote. “The caller advised that there was a Hispanic female tied up in the backyard and she was unresponsive.”
EverythingLubbock.com learned from sources that a search warrant was executed at the residence where Garcia stayed. Among the items taken were pants, shoes, a shirt, a laptop computer, a phone, “greenish cordage,” and “purple cordage.”
Three days after the murder, Sheriff Kelly Rowe held a press conference. He did not answer questions at time concerning the issue of Castillo being tied up.
The sheriff did say Garcia confessed and that he killed her with a “knife-type weapon.”
Garcia was also mentioned in another search warrant concerning the January 13 murder of Kmydron Jordan.
The Jordan search warrant said, “On a Crime Line tip received on January 16, 2018, the tipster reports information that [two persons] … and another individual named Xavier Garcia were involved with killing Kmydron Jordan.”
The warrant did not say Garcia was the suspect in the Jordan case – only that he may have been “involved with” the murder.
Garcia was already on probation (deferred adjudication) for an aggravated assault case in 2017 in which he admitted he put a gun in a woman’s mouth. In the 2017 case, a police report said Garcia threatened to kill her if she called the cops.
Garcia was held Monday in the Lubbock County Detention Center on a $350,000 bond for murder in the Castillo case.
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*Correction: Items were taken from a residence where Garcia stayed.
