California police shooting: Suspect in officer murder Trump used to call for wall funding captured, say police

Officer Ronil Singh leaves behind a wife and young son

The man accused of killing a California police officer during a traffic stop has been captured, authorities have announced. Donald Trump has cited the manhunt in his push to fund a wall on the US-Mexico border.

Police officer Ronil Singh was shot and killed after arresting a suspected drunken driver in the town of Newman, in California’s San Joaquin Valley, the day after Christmas. Video footage taken from a local convenience store, led police to determine the suspect was a Mexican citizen who had been living in the country illegally.

On Friday, police revealed that the suspect, Gustavo Perez Arriaga, had been arrested in the city of Bakersfield, about 200 miles away. His brother and a colleague were also detained for allegedly misleading officers about the suspect’s whereabouts, said Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson.

At a press conference, the officer’s younger brother, Reggie Singh, choked back tears as he paid tribute to police and law enforcement personnel who had detained the suspect. His family had originally moved to the US from Fiji and the officer had a wife and a young son.

“Ronil Singh was my older brother….Yes, he’s not coming back, but there are a lot of people out there who are missing him,” he said.

He said he wanted to thank those officers who had worked “day and night” to make the arrests. “I was waiting for this to happen,” he added.

Mr Christianson said the suspect was a “criminal” who had entered the country illegally. He said police believe he was trying to return to Mexico when he was arrested and that he also claimed to part of a criminal gang called the Surenos.

He said the suspect had previous convictions for driving under the influence – convictions for which he had not been deported. “An officer lost his life,” he said

The shooting of the California officer became another part of the already highly charged national debate about immigration, when Mr Trump tweeted about the incident a day afterwards. Mr Trump announced his run for the White House in the summer of 2015, at a press conference at which he denounced illegal immigration and “criminals” from Mexico.

On Thursday, with the government in partial shutdown because of his refusal to reach a compromise with Democrats over a budget if it does not include include $5bn for a border wall, Mr Trump tweeted: “There is right now a full scale manhunt going on in California for an illegal immigrant accused of shooting and killing a police officer during a traffic stop. Time to get tough on border security. Build the wall!”

On Friday, the president said he would shut the border with Mexico if he did not receive funding from Congress and threatened to cut aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, three desperately poor and violent nations that are home to most of the recent migrants trying to enter the US.

It is not known how long Mr Arriaga, 33, had been living in the country illegally after crossing the border in Arizona. Police said he had been in the US for several years.

Mr Christianson, who earlier this year met Mr Trump at a White House roundtable on illegal immigration, said Mr Arriaga’s brother, Adrian Virgen, 25, and and a work colleague, Erik Razo Quiroz, 32, had also been arrested for allegedly lying police about the suspect’s whereabouts.

The sheriff blamed California’s sanctuary law for preventing local authorities from reporting Mr Arriaga to federal immigration officials for his previous arrests, adding that if had been deported, Mr Singh would still be alive.