BOSTON, Feb. 2, 2015—Boston Police homicide investigators and detectives assigned to the Suffolk DA’s office are in New York City this morning to take custody of the man who allegedly fled a murder charge in the shooting death of Stephen Perez, Jr., District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

Authorities plan to return PETER CASTILLO (D.O.B. 8/6/88) of Salem to Massachusetts later today and arraign him in Suffolk Superior Court tomorrow on indictments charging first-degree murder and unlawful possession of a firearm. Castillo is currently held in New York as a fugitive from justice after the US Marshals Service returned him to the United States from the Dominican Republic last month.

Perez, a 22-year-old resident of Revere and a veteran of the US Army, was gunned down in a parking garage at 290 Tremont St. just before 2:00 a.m. on April 28, 2012. Castillo was identified as a suspect in the course of an extensive investigation by the Homicide Units of the Boston Police Department and Suffolk DA’s office that included the release of surveillance footage from the area. The grand jury investigation also yielded indictments charging Lynn residents LUIS SEPELVEDA (D.O.B. 8/15/84) and JANICE HARDY (D.O.B. 12/12/90) with perjury and misleading an investigator.

Last year, in light of evidence that Castillo had fled the country, the US Marshals Service added Castillo to their 15 Most Wanted Fugitives list. The manhunt gained momentum when they developed information leading them to believe he was at a residence in the city of Santo Domingo. Marshals forwarded the information to the Dominican Republic’s Direccion Nacional Control de Drogas Fugitive Task Force whose members discovered that Castillo fled the residence with the help of local neighbors and hid in the neighborhood. He was located and arrested on the evening of Jan. 15. On Jan. 17, Marshals escorted Castillo back to the U.S. He has been held in a New York City jail since that time.

“We’ve always stressed the importance of interagency cooperation, and this is a prime example of what we can accomplish together,” Conley said. “Local, state, federal, and even international partners worked together to locate and apprehend this defendant. It’s proof that there is no distance we won’t travel, no legal lever we won’t use, to see that justice is done in a Suffolk County homicide.”

Weather permitting, Castillo will be brought back to Massachusetts later today for arraignment tomorrow afternoon in the Magistrate’s Session of Suffolk Superior Court.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt