Nearly two decades after killing a woman while he was free on bond for brutally assaulting another, a man who was on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list was expected to arrive in Chicago on Tuesday to face charges, authorities said.
Fidel Urbina, 41, had been on the run since March 1998 before Mexican federal authorities arrested him last September outside the town of Valle de Zaragoza in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, according to the FBI.
Urbina, whose last known address was in the 2100 block of South Fairfield, had been held there pending extradition. He was expected to land in Chicago on Tuesday night and to appear in Cook County criminal court on Wednesday.
Urbina was arrested in March 1998 and charged with kidnapping, beating and sexually assaulting a woman in Chicago. After posting bond ahead of trial for that crime, he then assaulted 22-year-old Gabriella Torres and bludgeoned her to death, authorities said.
Torres’ body was found stuffed in the trunk of a burning car in an alley in the 2300 block of West 50th Street. Urbina then fled the country, authorities said.
A federal arrest warrant was issued in July 1999, and a warrant was issued by Mexican authorities in August 2006. The FBI added Urbina to their Top 10 Most Wanted in June 2012, and officers finally tracked him down on Sept. 22, 2016.
Urbina is charged in Cook County with the sexual assaults of both women and the murder of Torres.
“Many family members have waited a long time for this day to come and they deserve the opportunity to face the accused in a court of law,” Michael J. Anderson, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Chicago Field Office, said following the arrest.
