A 24-year-old Saint Paul man has been charged with murder in the death of a man found stabbed near railroad tracks on the city’s East Side last month.
Omar Andres Ramos Castro, 24, of Saint Paul, has been charged with second-degree intentional murder in the death of 44-year-old Gabriel A. Perez. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 40 years.
Officers were called around 11 a.m. on May 25 to the 1400 block of Case Avenue for a report of a body lying by the railroad tracks, according to a criminal complaint. The 911 caller said he had been walking his dog along the tracks when the dog kept pulling him toward something and alerting him. He found a man lying between two parallel sets of tracks who appeared to be dead. The caller said the body had not been there when he walked the same area around the same time the day before.
READ MORE → Ramsey County coverage
Officers found a shirtless man wearing shorts and one sandal, with lacerations to his left arm, chest and torso. Medics declared him dead and said his injuries didn’t appear to have been caused by a train.
Investigators found a blood trail running about 15 feet along the tracks and the man’s matching sandal about six feet from the body. A foot away, they found an eyeglass prescription in Perez’s name and they confirmed his identity through his driver’s license photo. A Subaru Crosstrek registered to Perez was found parked on Prosperity Avenue, less than half a mile from the body.
Perez’s family told investigators he had left a gathering around 4 p.m. on May 24 in his blue Crosstrek to meet friends at a brewery, saying he would be back. He was last seen wearing Birkenstock sandals, light-colored shorts and a tank top. His family hadn’t heard from him since.
Phone records showed Perez exchanged four calls on May 24 with a number that investigators later tied to Ramos Castro, including one that lasted nearly eight minutes. Train video and a track inspector established that Perez’s body was not on the tracks at 11:30 a.m. on May 24 but was clearly visible by 8:55 p.m. that evening. Surveillance video showed two men walking onto the tracks around 7:03 p.m., one of them in a blue tank top investigators believe was Perez.
Other surveillance footage captured a man in a light-colored “Saddle Up” hooded sweatshirt and tan cargo pants at a nearby Speedway and walking toward the railroad tracks the same evening.
On May 26, a police dog led officers to a bloody cellphone in a densely wooded area near the tracks. It belonged to Perez and carried fingerprints that were not his. Investigators also found that the same number that had called Perez had sent him a pinned location over WhatsApp on May 24, near the tracks where he was killed.
Investigators tracked that phone number to an apartment about a half-mile from where Perez was killed and identified the man using it as Ramos Castro. Officers arrested him on June 4 after executing a search warrant there.
After being advised of his rights through a Spanish-speaking interpreter, Ramos Castro agreed to speak with investigators. He initially said he had met Perez only once, to help remove construction debris from a residence, and denied any friendship. He acknowledged Perez called him often about jobs and to invite him to eat or smoke marijuana, and said he had blocked Perez for calling too much. He first claimed he had spent May 24 at home and at a lake with cousins and denied meeting Perez at the tracks.
→ Sign up for the MN CRIME newsletter
After repeated questioning, Ramos Castro admitted he and Perez were together by the tracks for about 10 minutes but claimed he left Perez there alone. He eventually admitted stabbing Perez, saying Perez had repeatedly made unwanted sexual advances and grabbed him despite his protests. He said he became enraged, produced a pocketknife and stabbed Perez, but couldn’t recall how many times because he was overwhelmed by anger.
Ramos Castro said Perez asked him to stop during the stabbing. He said he threw away the knife, his sweatshirt and his pants in his apartment complex’s garbage because they had blood on them, and that the garbage had already been collected. Asked whether he had told anyone what happened, he replied, “Only me and God.”
The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office determined Perez died from multiple sharp force injuries and ruled the death a homicide. The autopsy found stab wounds to his back, neck, chest and abdomen, defensive wounds to his arms and left hand, injuries to his carotid artery and trachea, fractured vertebrae and injuries to his lungs, liver and bowel.
Ramos Castro is being held at the Ramsey County Jail on $2.5 million bail, with his next court appearance set for June 8.
