TAMPA, FLA.
SWAT teams swarmed a downtown Tampa hotel early today to arrest a suspect in a quadruple killing and a 4-year-old autistic boy believed to be the man’s son was found safe, Tampa police said.
Police said they took Adam Matos, 28, into custody at the Floridian Hotel and multiple charges are pending. The child, Ismael Tristan Santisteban, was with him.
A tip led multiple law enforcement agencies to downtown Tampa.
The Tampa Tribune reports police used a ruse to lure Matos out of his room and away from the child. Pasco Sheriff Chris Nocco said Matos was caught by surprise and didn’t put up a fight. Matos was in Tampa with plans to leave the area with the boy, Nocco said.
The sheriff ’s office worked with Tampa police to devise “a plan so this would end safely,” Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor said.
Castor said the child seemed fine. “He is in good spirits,” she said during a news conference this morning.
The search for Matos and the boy began Thursday after Sheriff ’s deputies in nearby Pasco County conducted a welfare check at a Hudson home. The deputies who stopped by the home found no one home, but noticed a bad odor in the area. They walked down the street toward an area where birds were circling and found four bodies — two men and two women — piled on top of each other. He said they had apparently been there for several days.
Nocco said the scene inside the home alarmed investigators.
Matos quickly became a suspect. He had been seen in the area recently and Nocco said the killings were not a random act.
While at the Tampa hotel, Castor said Matos used his own name to check into the hotel around midnight and he had gone to a bus station near the hotel to ask about routes and bus fares.
Nocco said Matos is either the boy’s biological father or a father figure to him. The boy had last been seen at his Pasco County home Aug. 28. He said the boy’s mother called the sheriff ’s office that day and said Matos had threatened her with a knife.
Officials have not released the names of the victims or said how they may be related to the boy and to Matos.
The investigation was continuing.
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