Nearly a month after Fairfield jewellery store owner Tara Sinchuri was shot dead inside his own shop, investigators have made their first arrest — in New York City — and named a second man who is still on the run and, police warn, armed and dangerous.
Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser announced on Friday, November 13, that one person was under arrest in connection with the deadly robbery and that authorities had identified at least one other suspect, according to WXIX Fox 19 in Cincinnati. The prosecutor credited the city's Flock license-plate reader cameras for the breakthrough in the case.
Fairfield police say their investigators, working with the U.S. Marshals Service, arrested Carlos Idrogo-Arias in New York City on Wednesday, November 4. He is in custody awaiting extradition to Ohio. Officials have not disclosed what charges he faces, and no plea has been reported. An arrest is an allegation, not a conviction: Idrogo-Arias is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
A second man, Richard Guzman-Guzman, is still wanted. Investigators believe he may be hiding in New York or New Jersey, and police have warned the public that he is considered armed and dangerous. He too has not been convicted of anything, and a wanted notice is not a verdict. Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the Fairfield Police Department.
How the cameras led investigators to New York
According to the Cincinnati Enquirer's reporting of the investigation, the two men left the scene in a vehicle that police later identified through Fairfield's Flock license-plate reader cameras, and that camera lead, together with the store's own surveillance video, helped authorities identify the suspects. The investigation is being run by the Fairfield Police Department with help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — a multi-agency effort that reflects how far the trail ran from one storefront on Dixie Highway.
The October killing this arrest follows
This arrest is the first major development in the case Awaaz Punjab reported in October. On Tuesday, October 20, officers responded to reports of gunshots at Everest Jewels on Dixie Highway in Fairfield, about 30 miles north of Cincinnati, just before 1 p.m. They found Sinchuri, 52, dead inside the store and the front window of the business shattered. Police investigated the case from the start as a robbery-homicide, and detectives asked nearby businesses for surveillance footage of a car leaving the scene, WLWT reported at the time.
Our original report on the killing, published when no suspect had been arrested, is here: Fairfield jeweller Tara Sinchuri killed in robbery, October
Sinchuri was a father of three. Community reporting describes him as a Bhutanese immigrant who settled in the United States in 2009 and built Everest Jewels into a family business selling jewellery and clothing to the region's growing South Asian community; a vigil was held in his memory in Fairfield. The Jewelers' Security Alliance noted at the time that he was the third member of the jewellery industry killed on the job this year, its executive vice president Scott Guginsky confirmed.
The killing happened as the local Hindu Bhutanese-Nepali community was preparing for the Vijayadashami festival, and immigrant business owners told reporters afterwards that they were scared. For small immigrant-run stores — jewellers, convenience stores, gas stations — the case has become part of a wider conversation about security cameras, lighting, and never working alone, the same conversation Punjabi store owners across the Midwest have after every robbery.
What happens next runs on two tracks. Idrogo-Arias must first be extradited from New York to Ohio, where the charges against him — still undisclosed — would be formally filed and he would appear in a Butler County court. Separately, the search for Guzman-Guzman continues across New York and New Jersey. Prosecutors have not announced a motive beyond the robbery itself, and police have not said whether they believe more people were involved.