19-year-old arrested in ‘brutal’ stabbing death of a woman in Great Falls, Virginia police say

By Lila Dominus and Holly Yan, CNN

(CNN) — Virginia police have arrested a man suspected in the gruesome death of a woman in Great Falls.

Alexis Antonio Cedillos-Campos, 19, was arrested in connection with the homicide of Carmen Lizet Puch, a 42-year-old woman who was found dead Monday in the parking lot of a park, Fairfax County police said.

“Our victim suffered numerous stab wounds in a really brutal, unspeakable way,” Police Chief Kevin Davis said at a Wednesday news conference.

“We have video footage of our suspect at the restaurant where he worked with our victim, arming himself with a fixed blade knife, taking a pair of black latex gloves, taking a water bottle, and then off he goes with the intent to do harm and kill the victim,” the chief said.

Cedillos-Campos is an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. He was arrested in 2024 by Customs and Border Protection after illegally crossing the border near El Paso, Texas, the agency said.

Police said Cedillos-Campos and Puch were coworkers and also had an “intimate relationship.”

“That relationship was intimate … and there are other aspects of that intimate relationship that involve other people,” Davis said. “And that’s as far as I’ll go with that.”

More details will be released Wednesday afternoon, police said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.