2 Clovis residents arrested in 2019 Fresno County killing

Fresno County sheriff’s detectives arrested two Clovis residents Tuesday in the 2019 killing of Jose Vasquez, ending nearly seven years without an arrest in a case that began on a rural road outside Fowler.

The Fresno County Sheriff’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Team took Celeste Aguirre, 26, and Juan Cervantes Jr., 29, into custody on Tuesday, June 23, 2026. Both were booked into the Fresno County Jail on murder charges in the death of Vasquez, who was 18 and from Selma.

Vasquez was found around 7:15 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019, along E. Springfield Avenue just west of Fowler Avenue, after a Fowler Unified School District bus driver spotted what appeared to be a body while driving the route. Deputies who responded found Vasquez had been shot multiple times. Investigators said early on that the evidence suggested he had been shot where he was found and left there, rather than his body being moved from another location.

The arrests give the long-running Fowler-area homicide investigation a new phase, but many questions remain unanswered. The sheriff’s office has not released the full circumstances of what led to Vasquez’s death, including the motive, how the suspects knew him, or whether anyone else was involved. For Vasquez’s family, the case moved from years of silence to a public arrest announcement, but it did not yet bring a complete explanation for why the teenager was killed on that road outside Fowler.

Sheriff’s detectives are still asking for help from the public. The office said anyone with additional information should contact Detective Oscar Iniguez and reference the case. That request suggests investigators are continuing to build the case even after the arrests, as the criminal process now moves from a cold case file into court.

The case has tied together Selma, Fowler, Clovis and the broader Fresno County justice system since the morning Vasquez was discovered. What began as a school bus driver’s report on a quiet stretch of E. Springfield Avenue is now headed into a murder prosecution that may finally reveal what happened to the Selma teenager.