Arrest made in Johnny Perez murder cold case

WICHITA FALLS, Texas (KAUZ) - The Wichita Falls Police Department (WFPD) has announced the arrest of Daniel Sauceda for the murder of Johnny Perez stemming from a shooting incident that took place in July of 2021.

WFPD shared that this arrest culminates a multi-year cold case investigation.

The Wichita Falls Police Department shared that on July 15, 2021, officers responded to the Avalon Meadows apartment complex at 2610 Iowa Park Road in reference to a high-priority welfare check for Perez.

When officers arrived on the scene, they found Perez sitting in a chair with blood on his face and found Perez to have a gunshot wound to the back of the head and to his right thigh area.

On July 29, 2021, detectives were able to secure a search warrant for Sauceda’s phone in an effort to recover any deleted material, but were unable to recover any.

Later in October 2024, detectives started using a program called Cell Hawk, which helped identify that both Perez’s and Sauceda’s cell phones pinged from the same cell towers on the night of his murder.

Later, when Sauceda was interviewed by investigators, he could not explain why both his cell phones put him at the scene of the murder, nor could he explain to investigators 24 crime-related searches made before the discovery of Perez’s body that were found on his cellphone.

Wichita Falls Police secured an arrest warrant for Sauceda for the Murder of Johnny Perez and arrested him here in Wichita Falls.

As of the publication of this article, Sauceda is booked into the Wichita County Jail on a $1,000,000 bond for Murder.