New criminal charges continue to mount against Marco Perez, the 19-year-old accused of killing Mobile Police Officer Sean Tuder, according to court records and police.
Tuder, 31, was fatally shot January 20 in the parking lot of the Peach Place Inn apartment complex in West Mobile. Police Chief Lawrence Battiste said at the time that Tuder had been searching for Perez, who was wanted on multiple state and federal charges.
Perez now faces seven state charges, including two counts of first-degree theft, receiving stolen property, false reporting to a law enforcement officer, probation violation, second-degree burglary and capital murder in connection with Tuder’s death. He is also facing a federal firearms charge that police say he was evading when he first drew the attention of the Mobile Police Department months earlier.
The false-report accusation stems from an alleged scheme between Perez and his mother, Tiffany Perez, who told police he had been kidnapped and was missing. Tiffany Perez was charged in connection with that false report days before Tuder was killed, but Marco Perez remained at large.
Police now say Perez spent the days before the shooting on a crime spree across Mobile County. He has been charged with a burglary reported January 18 at a home on Charlene Court in West Mobile, where only a few dollars in coins and some fruit were taken. A separate charge accuses him of stealing a 2011 GMC 1500 truck that same day from a home on Brandy Oak Court — both less than a mile from the Peach Place Inn.
The Mobile County Sheriff’s Office has also identified Perez as a suspect in an auto theft reported January 13 on Sugar Creek Drive South. Police have said the gun used in Tuder’s killing had been stolen from an unlocked vehicle days earlier, though none of the new charging documents mention a handgun being taken.
Prosecutors said they expect Perez to plead not guilty at a February 4 hearing. The capital murder count gives the state the option to seek the death penalty, but Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich has not said whether her office will pursue capital punishment.
Perez is being held at the Mobile County Metro Jail without bond.