Community Police & Fire

Phone and ballistics evidence linked suspect to home where his father, brother were killed

Pierce County Sheriff’s Office detectives identified Luis Miguel Huitron Campos, 25, as a suspect in the April 8 murders of his father and brother, thanks to cell phone records and ballistics tests. 

Pierce County prosecutors charged Huitron Campos, of Lakewood, with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of arson on Wednesday, May 21, in Superior Court. Authorities believe Huitron Campos shot and killed his father, Oliverio Huitron-Rosalez, 64, and brother, Alejandro Huitron Campos, 31, at a home on 14th Avenue NW near Gig Harbor. 

Deputies arrested Luis Miguel Huitron Campos on Tuesday at his home in Lakewood.

Image from a Pierce County Sheriff’s Office video of the arrest of a suspect in a double homicide in Gig Harbor. The arrest occurred Tuesday, May 20, 2025.

Phone records

Investigators discovered the murders after Gig Harbor Fire and Medic One responded to a house fire there. Prosecutors charged Huitron Campos with setting that fire. 

A neighbor called 911 to report the fire shortly after 8 p.m. on April 8. Detectives obtained records from Huitron Campos’s mobile phone service provider showing that his phone was at the home when the fire started. The records showed that the phone left the house about 8:11 p.m. and returned to Huitron Campos’ home in Lakewood. 

In a search of the Lakewood home, detectives found a 9 mm pistol that was a possible match with the weapon used in the murders.  

Three rounds were missing from the pistol’s magazine and a box of ammunition. That number is “consistent with the number of bullets used to kill the victims,” a detective wrote in charging documents. The brand of rounds matched a casing found near the father’s body. 

Documents indicated that Huitron Campos bought the gun on Dec. 14, 2024, and obtained a concealed pistol license for it on Dec. 28. 

Unknown motive

Detectives also found a rag in Huitron Campos’s car that “tested positive for some accelerant.” In the aftermath of the fire, detectives found a gas can and lighter in the kitchen of the house on 14th Avenue. 

Charging documents offered no hints about possible motives for the killings. A statement from the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday indicated that detectives are still investigating a possible motive. 

The documents indicated that Oliverio Huitron-Rosalez, the father, was a commercial fisherman who worked in Alaska during the summer.

Huitron-Rosalez lived a Spartan lifestyle in the United States and invested his savings, though relatives noted that he owned several properties in Mexico. One relative noted that Huitron-Rosalez recently emptied a $100,000 investment account to pay for a construction project at a “mansion” he owned in Mexico.

Huitron Campos remains in the Pierce County Jail on $5 million bail. Court documents indicate he has no previous criminal record. 

His next hearing is scheduled for June 18, with a jury trial set for July 7. Jury trial dates are typically delayed. 

The scene of a fire and criminal investigation on on 14th Avenue NW on Wednesday, April 9. Photo by Vince Dice