A Southern California man convicted of killing his mother as a teenager was captured in Mexico a week after he walked away from a halfway house, violating the conditions of his probation, authorities said.
Ike Nicholas Souzer, 20, was arrested Wednesday in the coastal city of Rosarito by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexican officials after a weeklong manhunt, the Orange County District Attorney's Office said. He is once again in custody in Orange County.
In a news release, the district attorney's office described Souzer as an "extremely dangerous and violent criminal."
Souzer had already served his sentence for stabbing his mother to death in 2017, when he was 13. He was subsequently convicted on a vandalism charge and served a short sentence, then released from custody March 20, prosecutors said.
The judge in that case also sentenced Souzer to two years of probation.
This was the second time Souzer disappeared from a halfway house. In 2022, he was let out of jail and moved to a halfway house in Santa Ana where he removed his electronic monitor and left. He was later captured by police. In his recent escape, Souzer again cut off his electronic monitoring device.
Furthermore, he managed to flee from a juvenile detention center back in 2019.
Todd Spitzer, the District Attorney of Orange County, expressed his belief that Souzer should receive stricter punishments and criticized the judges who have presided over his cases.
"This individual does not warrant leniency; he has squandered every chance to start anew and instead has consistently chosen to break the law and defy law enforcement. His actions upon being released were not those of someone who simply forgot to check in with his probation officer," Spitzer stated in the official announcement. "The moment he regained his freedom, he immediately devised a plan to escape to a foreign country in yet another attempt to evade the consequences of his crimes."
Souzer was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the tragic death of his mother. Despite arguments from his defense attorney claiming self-defense due to years of abuse, the Los Angeles Times
Additionally, Souzer faces charges for three separate assaults on correctional officers, possession of a shank while in jail, and most recently, defacing a freeway underpass with graffiti, according to prosecutors.
