Fifth Person Charged in Southwest Missouri Homicide

Authorities have charged a fifth person in the southwest Missouri killing of a drug cartel member.

Twenty-one-year-old Yovanny Aroldo Mendivil-Balderrama was charged Wednesday in Webster County with first-degree murder in Monday's shooting death of 24-year-old Oscar Martinez. Bond is set at $1 million. No attorney is listed for him in online court records.

Mendivil-Balderrama was arrested Tuesday after dozens of officers spent a day searching for him. He and a female suspect were accused of fleeing from authorities Monday before ditching their vehicle on Interstate 44 in Lawrence County. The woman was arrested after the chase, and the other suspects were arrested in Christian County.

Court documents say the suspects set up Martinez to be ambushed and killed to buy one of the suspects time to pay a drug debt.