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Morelia, Mexico: A US Marine wanted in the brutal slaying of a pregnant colleague who accused him of rape was arrested on Thursday night in western Mexico, authorities said.
Police arrested Corporal Cesar Laurean as he wandered on a street in the rural township of Tacambaro in the state of Michoacan.
The bearded suspect, chained at the wrists and ankles, stared straight ahead but his eyes occasionally filled up with tears as he answered a reporter's questions in terse phrases.
"You know my name. You know who I am," Laurean told The Associated Press while being held at the Michoacan state attorney general's office in Morelia, the state capital.
Asked if he wanted to say anything, Laurean simply said "Proof", but wouldn't explain.
Asked what he would do next, he replied, "Do I have a choice? ... I don't know."
Magdalena Guzman, a spokeswoman for Michoacan state prosecutors, said police carrying out an anti-kidnapping operation stopped Laurean because they thought he looked suspicious. When they realised he did not speak Spanish well, they ran his name through a computer and realised that he was wanted by the US on charges in the death of Marine Lance Cpl Maria Lauterbach.
Laurean appeared a bit disoriented. He told police he had been sleeping in fields and eating avocados and other fruit he found there, and said he had only 10 pesos (about Dh3.47) in his pocket when arrested.
Laurean has relatives in the neighbouring state of Jalisco, and had been seen there. The arrest caps a three-month international manhunt after Lauterbach's burned remains were found in January in the backyard of his home near the Camp Lejeune military installation in North Carolina.
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