Aaron Cruz, 42, a male of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity, was found fatally shot before dawn on August 30, 2025, in San Diego's Nestor neighborhood. Officers responding to reports of gunfire around 3:25 to 3:30 a.m. discovered him inside a camping-style trailer at a fenced storage lot in the 2000 block of Sunset Avenue, about a mile and a half north of the Mexican border.
A second victim, 64-year-old Richard Hartung, was found dead in a separate trailer at the same property; both men lived in those campers.
Detectives canvassed the area and, with help from city-owned and private security cameras, identified a red Chevrolet Suburban as a suspect vehicle. On September 2, investigators conducted a traffic stop on a matching Suburban near 130 West Calle Primera and arrested the driver, 24-year-old David Verduzco Kruglova. He was booked into county jail on two counts of murder.
The investigation widened days later. On September 5, a second suspect—a 16-year-old male from Tijuana, Mexico—was taken into custody; due to his age, police did not release his name. Then, on September 12, a third suspect, 22-year-old Marco Ramirez, was arrested, and investigators recovered two assault rifles believed to have been used in the killings. Local coverage identified that third suspect as Marco Ramos Ramirez, 22, echoing police accounts of multiple arrests and underscoring the cross-border ties noted by detectives.
From the outset, authorities described the scene as two men slain in separate trailers within adjacent storage lots, a grim tableau that drew an intensive homicide response. As the case progressed, police announcements detailed each break: the surveillance-aided vehicle lead, the first arrest within days of the shootings, the juvenile suspect from Tijuana, and finally the capture of a third adult suspect alongside the recovery of suspected murder weapons. With those developments, investigators publicly tied the sequence of early-morning gunfire on August 30 to a trio of alleged participants and a distinctive getaway vehicle, while asking anyone with information to contact the Homicide Unit or Crime Stoppers.
Cruz's death is recorded among San Diego's 2025 gun homicides, with public listings and local reporting reflecting the same date, location, and victim identification released by police.
