Ex-officer blamed ‘Mother State’ for troubles before 2 shocking W. Richland killings

A former police officer who murdered his ex-wife and girlfriend before shooting himself in April left behind a note in his West Richland home.

The computer printout signed by Elias Zuniga Huizar, 39, helps answer some of the lingering questions about the killing spree that shocked the Tri-Cities.

Huizar’s last message dated the day of the shooting was included in 62 pages of the final West Richland police reports released to the Tri-City Herald in response to a Washington state Public Records Act request.

The documents are part of the investigation into the shooting outside a West Richland elementary school and the haunting discovery of another body — Huizar’s 17-year-old girlfriend — at his home in the same neighborhood.

The reports help explain the timeline of the killings and Huizar’s mental state at the time.

Bitter divorce and custody

Huizar had gone through a bitter divorce with Amber Rodriguez, 31, his wife of nine years and mother of two of his three sons.

During the three-year court battle that ended in 2023, Huizar told the judge that he’d left his job with the Yakima Police Department because of post-traumatic stress and had received counseling.

His wife moved to the Tri-Cities and ended up with primary custody of the two young boys, while Huizar had visitation rights.

But when Huizar was charged with sexual misconduct in Benton County earlier this year, Rodriguez got a protection order that prevented him from seeing the boys, then 9 and 5.

“Let police officers get help for PTSD!” Huizar wrote in his apparent suicide note. “Stop the system of a Mother State for divorce. I lived for my children!”

A “mother state” refers to a perception that a particular court system is believed to favor moms over fathers in child custody cases.

Rodriguez was killed less than four weeks before a custody hearing was scheduled on May 14 in which she planned to ask to have Huizar’s visitation rights revoked.

He’d already left his job with the Yakima Police Department and lost his emergency substitute teaching position with the Richland School District. Then, he was charged with starting an illegal underage 2022 relationship with his girlfriend, Angelica Santos, and with raping one of her teen friends earlier this year.

Huizar’s note was found at the house he rented in West Richland, just a block from where his oldest son attended school and where Rodriguez worked as a paraeducator.

On April 22, he shot her after school near the bus pickup zone and in front of their son. He then fled to Oregon.

During the manhunt that followed, officers obtained a search warrant for his house. That’s where they found Angelica Santos dead.

Huizar’s note explained that authorities could find Santos’ car parked at a nearby apartment complex. And that her family could have Santos’ and their baby son’s belongings. Police didn’t know where the boy was.

Huizar went on to say that all his possessions should be given to his mother, according to the West Richland police report.

Girlfriend’s murder

Investigators have never said publicly when Santos was likely killed.

The recently released reports make clear she died the night before or early in the morning before he shot Rodriguez at the school.

Huizar and Santos were at a gathering with Santos’ family in the Yakima Valley on April 21, and she came back to West Richland with him. She also brought their 1-year-old.

Her cellphone’s location service put her in Kennewick about 11 p.m. that night, then the phone signal turned off, the reports said.

The reports show he stabbed her nine times while she fought him in the living room of his house. He took time to clean up the blood before laying her body on a plastic drop cloth, with her head pillowed by a quilt in the same room.

He placed electric fans around her body, likely to keep it cool.

The reports showed that traffic cameras documented Huizar driving around Kennewick, Richland and West Richland on April 22 before he backed into a parking spot at William Wiley Elementary School about 3 p.m. to wait for school to be out.

Security video and traffic cameras

The police reports also revealed that security video showed Huizar emerging from behind a school portable building before approaching the car of his ex-wife. When Rodriguez neared her car, Huizar approached her.

Rodriguez was headed back toward the school when Huizar pulled his handgun and shot her in the back. After she fell, he fired again. An autopsy found she was shot seven times.

Huizar then ran back into a silver Toyota Corolla.

The reports do not say where his 1-year-old son, Roman, was at the time of the shooting.

But it’s clear from traffic cameras that he did not return to his nearby home and headed immediately to Oregon. An Amber Alert was issued hours later for the boy.

He was found the next day buckled in a child car seat after Huizar was chased by Oregon State Police near Eugene.

Police had tracked Huizar’s car to Portland, where he was seen withdrawing $1,500 from his bank account.

Oregon State Police found the car driving on Interstate 5 south toward Eugene and tried to stop him, triggering a 20-minute chase, that included a brief shootout .

The police reports show that Huizar called 911 to demanded that the officers stop ramming his car and shooting at him because he had the baby inside. Previous footage released by OSP showed Huizar firing first at officers during the chase.

Huizar ended up hitting the rear of a semi truck on I-5 and the Corolla ended up in the median.

As officers converged with guns drawn, Huizar shot and killed himself before police could reach him. The baby was found unharmed, still strapped in his car seat.

Gun and body armor

The police reports released by West Richland also shed some light on other questions in the case: Why Huizar had a gun and where did it come from?

Two protection orders related to the rape investigation barred him from having guns.

West Richland police already had seized two of his guns, a Glock .40 caliber pistol and his Yakima police-issued rifle.

They apparently did not know about a second .40-caliber Glock that he’d bought in 2014 when he was still a police officer. It was shipped to him at the Yakima Police Department, detectives said in their reports.

While he was not allowed to have any guns, he wasn’t ordered on court documents to turn over all his weapons, according to the reports.

Investigators also found other items inside the Corolla after the Oregon chase.

There was a bullet-proof tactical vest and two boxes of .40 caliber ammunition issued by Yakima police when he was still an officer.

It remains unclear how he still had those items three years after leaving the Yakima department.

Yakima police officials told the Herald recently they are looking into why Huizar still had those items.