The real story on his prior charges, not filtered through ICE or right-wing Twitter.
https://www.ffxnow.com/2025/12/19/man-charged-with-murder-for-fatal-reston-shooting/
According to online court records, Morales-Ortez had previously been charged with six different crimes, though the charges were later dropped in each case.
Among other cases, he was arrested in June 2020 as a 17-year-old for the June 23, 2019 murder of Jose Lorenzo Guillen Mejia, a 24-year-old Reston resident whose body was found on the footpath behind Hunters Wood Plaza.
After more than a year in jail, Morales-Ortez was ultimately released from custody and the charges against him were dropped in 2021 when “it became clear that he was ultimately not the perpetrator,” Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office spokesperson Laura Birnbaum says.
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Most recently, Morales-Ortez was arrested on Sept. 14 on charges of malicious wounding and brandishing for an incident that occurred two days earlier, online court records show. The charges were dropped on Dec. 15 — the day before this week’s fatal shooting — because prosecutors had “insufficient evidence to move forward” with the case, according to Birnbaum.
“The victim told police that they had moved out of the country and would not be coming to court to cooperate in proceedings, regardless of timing,” she told FFXnow. “Sadly, without the victim’s necessary testimony, we could not move forward.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told WJLA that it had sought to detain Morales-Ortez prior to the incident, claiming that he’s a native of El Salvador illegally residing in the United States.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office told FFXnow that, without a court-issued warrant, the jail had no grounds to keep him in custody, but ICE could’ve picked Morales-Ortez up upon his release.