CONROE, Texas — More than a year after Miguel Mondragon was shot and killed outside a North Austin market, police have arrested a sixth suspect in the case — and they caught him at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Franklyn Steven Wallace Zeledon, 20, was taken into custody on Monday, October 26, and booked into the Montgomery County Jail in Conroe on warrants for capital murder, two counts of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon and engaging in organized criminal activity, according to jail and court records cited by KXAN and Hoodline. Jail records also show a federal immigration detainer in his case, the reports said.

Source: KXAN

The night Miguel Mondragon was killed

Mondragon, 49, was shot at about 2:38 a.m. on August 3, 2025, near the La Michoacana Market at 9811 North Interstate 35 northbound service road in North Austin, according to the Austin Police Department. It was the city's 37th homicide of 2025, police said at the time. Investigators say a group followed Mondragon and two other men from La Toxika, a North Austin sports bar, and boxed in their red Chevrolet pickup in the market parking lot. Surveillance video showed a gray sedan and a white SUV, later identified as a Dodge Durango, blocking the truck as several masked people walked up carrying guns, according to affidavits described by KXAN.

The men in the truck heard several shots and fled, then called 911. Video showed Mondragon crawling before he stopped in a grassy area nearby. Officers found him dead from a gunshot wound to his right thigh, and his watch, phone and cash had been taken, according to the reports. Affidavits say the group picked Mondragon as a target because of his gold jewelry and planned to split the take among five people, including Zeledon. Interstate 35, beside which the killing happened, is one of Texas's busiest freight and travel corridors, carrying heavy truck traffic through Austin day and night.

How investigators say they found the sixth man

Investigators identified Zeledon through interviews with the five suspects already in custody and through cellphone records, according to the affidavits. One co-defendant, Yurisander Gongora Rojas, told police a dark gray Mazda 3 used that night was his and named Zeledon as one of the armed, masked men who got out of the vehicles. Another co-defendant, Hector Achang Batlle, said he, Zeledon and a third man approached the truck masked and armed, and that he fired his handgun twice to try to flatten the truck's tires. Phone records showed three calls to or from a number tied to Zeledon near La Toxika around the time of the shooting, the affidavit says. These are allegations in police affidavits, not findings by a court.

Source: Hoodline

One suspect told investigators she had worked at the bar until she was fired for stealing cash and wallets from customers, and that she pointed out customers as robbery targets, according to the reports — an allegation investigators say helps explain how Mondragon was chosen that night.

The other five suspects

Police arrested Alejandro Hurtado-Reyes and Yanaris Reyes on August 12, 2025, and arrested Antonio Gonzalez, Gongora Rojas and Achang Batlle that same August, CBS Austin reported at the time. All were first charged with capital murder. Court records later showed five of the suspects had their charges changed to aggravated robbery, while one still faces a murder charge, according to Hoodline. FOX 7 Austin reported that Hurtado-Reyes was released from the Travis County Jail later that month. The cases against the first five have been moving through the courts while detectives continued working to identify everyone allegedly involved.

Source: CBS Austin

What happens next

Zeledon remains booked in the Montgomery County Jail in Conroe, roughly 40 miles north of Houston, on the Austin-area warrants, according to the jail records cited by KXAN and Hoodline. No court date for him had been reported as of Saturday, October 31. In Texas, capital murder — a killing committed in the course of another felony such as robbery — is the state's most serious charge and can carry life in prison without parole or the death penalty if a defendant is convicted. Whether prosecutors keep the capital murder charge against Zeledon, as they did not for most of the first five suspects, will be one of the first questions his case raises.

For Mondragon's family, a sixth arrest does not bring him home. But it does mean that more than a year later, investigators kept working the case — and that everyone accused of taking a father's life over his jewelry will now have to answer in court.