A pregnant teen vanished a day before giving birth. She and her boyfriend are now dead

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday

Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice

Texas teenager Savanah Soto and her boyfriend Matthew Guerra were discovered dead in San Antonio on Tuesday.

The bodies of Soto, 18, and Guerra, 23, were found on 26 December inside a Kia Optima. An unborn baby was also found dead inside the car. The victims had been shot.

A search for the couple was carried out after their families became alarmed when Soto didn’t turn up on Saturday for an appointment to have her labour induced.

Now, San Antonio police have ruled the case a capital murder investigation and are seeking the public’s help in tracking down two persons of interest in the case.

Chilling footage released by police on Thursday captured the couple’s Kia Optima and a dark-coloured pickup truck with a bed cover. Police said that one person of interest was driving the Kia Optima and the other the pickup truck.

Many questions remain about the circumstances leading to their disappearance and deaths. Here’s what we know so far.

Soto was last seen on 22 December at the Valencia Lofts apartment complex in Leon Valley, a city in Bexar County, Texas. The teen lived there with Guerra, the father of her child, according to family members.

She was described by police as a 5-foot-1-inch pregnant female with brown hair and brown eyes.

Her family became concerned when she didn’t show up for a hospital appointment the following days. She was a week past her due date, and scheduled to have an induced labour, the family told local station KENS-TV.

Her mother, Gloria Cordova, said that she last heard from her daughter on Friday afternoon and got no answer when she knocked on her apartment door on Saturday afternoon.

Ms Cordova added that she also hadn’t been able to contact Guerra since her daughter’s disappearance.

Leon Valley police issued a CLEAR Alert for Soto on Monday and later said that her boyfriend was missing too. Soto’s family organized a search of the area near her apartment on Christmas night.

“Savanah was so, so happy because she was going to be a mommy. It breaks my heart,” her mother told KENS-TV.

The pair were reportedly found dead on Tuesday, 26 December in a parked car in San Antonio, Texas.

Someone spotted the car in the parking lot of an apartment complex in San Antonio and alerted the family, KENS-TV reported. Relatives then called the police.

Two bodies were found in the Kia Optima. Police Chief William McManus told a press conference that the bodies may have been there for three or four days.

San Antonio police have ruled the case a capital murder investigation and are seeking the public’s help in tracking down two persons of interest in the case.

The medical examiner confirmed the identity of the victims on Thursday.

Both Soto and Guerra died from a gunshot wound to the head.

In a press conference on Thursday, police released a video that captured two persons of interest wanted in connection to the murders.

In the video, a dark-coloured pickup truck with a bed cover is seen driving into a parking lot in San Antonio.

The couple’s Kia Optima is seen driving and coming to a stop side-by-side with the truck.

Police said that one person of interest was driving the Kia Optima and the other the pickup truck.

One of the persons of interest is seen emerging from the pickup truck and approaching the driver’s side of the victims’ car, appearing to speak to the individual inside.

The second person of interest is then seen getting out of the driver’s side of the Kia Optima.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus told reporters that none of the victims are visible in the footage.

The police chief would not confirm whether or not the video was believed to have been captured before or after the murders took place.

However, he said that police no longer believe it could be a murder-suicide – and are now probing the killings as capital murder.

“It was undetermined at that time whether we were going to be looking at it as a murder-suicide, or as a capital-murder investigation,” he said

“I think we’ve gotten past that point right now, unless we get evidence that would lead us to believe otherwise.”

He added: “It was a heinous act, it was unspeakable, the tragedy of it.”

Family members of the couple have also offered conflicting theories about what might have happened.

Soto’s sister-in-law alleged that she was being abused. “i won’t allow you to be one of those statistics of what happens when u have an abusive boyfriend,” she wrote on social media, in a post viewed by The New York Post.

Her mother also posted on Facebook: “I’m worried about her safety she is [with] her boyfriend who is no good.”

But according to the NY Post, Guerra’s mother wrote on social media: “If anyone knows my son Matthew Guerra he and his pregnant girlfriend are missing. I know my son and he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.”

It is not the first time that tragedy has struck the Soto family.

In 2022, Savanah Soto’s 15-year-old brother Ethan Soto was shot and killed. “It’s hard, it’s like one after another,” Gloria Cordova told KENS.

“It still hurts because what I tell my kids, I’m not complete, I’m not complete, and now I don’t have my daughter,” she said.

In October, the man accused of Ethan Soto’s murder was beaten in the courtroom. According to The Daily Mail, footage allegedly showed members of the Soto family launching themselves towards him as he took the stand.

The footage showed several individuals jumping over a partition and throwing punches at the man - who allegedly made a gesture at the group.

Earlier this week Savanah Soto’s sister-in-law, Mariana Delgado, wrote on Facebook: “It's supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year but it's not it's the WORST.

“Trying our best to give my daughter's a good Christmas but it's so hard to want to feel happy instead we are just heartbroken.. Savanah & baby Fabian ARE supposed to be celebrating with us , this isn't fair.”

In a separate post, Ms Delgado later requested the family to be allowed to grieve.