In the early morning hours of September 19, 2021, a sense of disquiet settled over a neighborhood in Snellville, Georgia. Inside a home on Forrest Bend Lane, the life of Pascual Jose Sarabia, a 21-year-old Hispanic man from Norcross, was brought to a violent and premature end. Gwinnett County Police officers were dispatched to the residence around 2 a.m. following a call about a person being shot.
Upon their arrival, they discovered Sarabia inside the house, having sustained at least one fatal gunshot wound to his torso. The motive for the shooting was not immediately clear to investigators, leaving a community to grapple with the sudden loss.
The Gwinnett County Police Department began an intensive investigation into the homicide. For a week, the details surrounding Sarabia's death remained shrouded in mystery. The case was one of two separate fatal shootings that occurred within an hour of each other in Gwinnett County that morning, stretching law enforcement resources and raising community concerns. As detectives worked to piece together the events that transpired inside the Snellville home, they appealed to the public for any information that might lead to an arrest, hoping to bring answers to a grieving family and a community on edge.
A significant breakthrough in the case came with the apprehension of a suspect. Nery Molina-Gallegos, a 20-year-old from Tucker, was identified and arrested in connection with Sarabia's death. With the assistance of the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office Uniform Warrants division, Molina-Gallegos was taken into custody in Norcross. He was subsequently charged with felony murder, aggravated battery, and multiple counts of aggravated assault. Following his arrest, Nery Molina-Gallegos was booked into the Gwinnett County Jail, where he was held without bond. While an arrest was made, the authorities did not publicly release a motive for the killing, leaving the question of 'why' to linger.
