HAYWARD — The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office has charged a 23-year-old man taken into custody while re-entering the United States from Mexico with murder in the fatal December 2019 shooting of a Hayward man, authorities said this week.

Around 4:45 p.m. Dec. 7, 2019, police responded to a shooting report near Santa Clara Way and Yolo Street, and arrived to find a man suffering from gunshot wounds. Despite first responders’ efforts, he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Alameda County Sheriff’s coroner’s bureau identified him as John Creech Jr., 20, of Hayward. He was the city’s fourth homicide of the year.

After investigative work by detectives, leads and evidence led them to identify Emmanuel Padilla Maciel as a suspect in Creech’s killing, and an Alameda County judge granted an arrest warrant in June 2022, followed in February by a second warrant from the district attorney’s office.

On April 14, Padilla Maciel was entering the United States from Mexico when a warrant turned up during a check by U.S. Customs and Border Protections agents, who detained him until Hayward police could take custody Wednesday, Hayward police said in a statement.

He was booked into Santa Rita Jail late Wednesday and held without bail, and faces arraignment Friday at Dublin’s East County Hall of Justice, according to a county records check Thursday night.

Anyone with information may call Hayward police Det. Scott Navas as 510-293-7176 and reference Case No. 2019-086486.

Contact George Kelly at 408-859-5180.

Source: www.mercurynews.com