On October 20, 2020, emergency responders in Bristol, Indiana, were dispatched to the Timberbrook Mobile Home Park following reports of a vehicle crash. Upon arriving at the scene around 7:45 p.m., authorities discovered 21-year-old White male Joshua Edward Roberts unresponsive inside the vehicle. While the incident initially appeared to be a traffic accident, the situation quickly evolved into a criminal investigation when first responders noted the nature of his injuries.
Roberts was pronounced dead at the scene, and a subsequent autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was a gunshot wound, prompting the Elkhart County Homicide Unit to take over the case.
Detectives launched an investigation that led them to identify two suspects believed to be involved in the fatal encounter, which authorities later described as an apparent robbery gone wrong. Nine days after the shooting, on October 29, 2020, police arrested 19-year-old Carlos Escobar-Escobedo and 21-year-old Luis Garcia. Both men were initially taken into custody on murder charges as investigators pieced together the events that led to Roberts' death inside the mobile home park.
The legal proceedings against the two men continued for over a year, culminating in a plea agreement with prosecutors. In January 2022, it was announced that both Garcia and Escobar-Escobedo had entered guilty pleas to the charge of robbery resulting in serious bodily injury. As part of the plea deal, the original murder charges filed against them were dismissed. Both men appeared in court for sentencing, where a judge ordered each of them to serve 40 years in prison for their roles in the death of Joshua Roberts.
