LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — Investigators said a man who shot and killed a Lake County woman in 1992 lived under a new name for almost two decades before he was caught.
Daniel Aguilera was in court Monday as a jury was seated.
Two very different versions of the case was put to the jurors during opening statements of his second-degree murder trial.
The prosecution said it's a story of a man who was angry over an unpaid debt, killed a woman and ran.
The defense said yes, Aguilera did run and change his name, but he didn't kill anybody.
Prosecutors said the prime suspect in the shooting of Soshi Patino, who died in her front yard in Mascotte, has always been Daniel Aguilera.
"Why 21 years? Pretty simple. We couldn't find him," said the prosecutor.
Detectives believed Aguilera had fled the country. But an informant came forward in 2011, telling investigators Aguilera was living under a different name with a family in Florida. They arrested him in Avon Park.
Aguilera's lawyer told the jury in his opening statement they've got the wrong man, and he ran and hid for so long because he feared for his life. And when he was caught, he mistakenly, his lawyer said, confessed.
"My client Daniel Aguilera, did leave the area, he did change his name, and when he was arrested in November 2011, he made a statement, 'I was there, I was the shooter,' in fact it was self-defense," Aguilera's lawyer said.
Aguilera's lawyer said the confession was a case of a terrified man who was telling investigators what they wanted to hear. The lawyer argues despite the case laid out by prosecutors, all is not as it may seem.
WFTV
