Carmen Lizet Puch was found near her car before investigators traced her final hours to a co-worker and an overnight meeting.
GREAT FALLS, Va. — A routine Monday morning at a wooded Northern Virginia park became a homicide investigation when Carmen Lizet Puch was found unresponsive beside the parking area near her car. Within two days, Fairfax County detectives had arrested a 19-year-old co-worker, and later court records gave investigators a possible reason for the meeting that preceded her death: a dispute involving screenshots that allegedly exposed an intimate relationship to the young man’s girlfriend.
The investigation started at 6:43 a.m. on Aug. 17, when Fairfax County police were sent to Difficult Run Park in the 8800 block of Georgetown Pike. Officers found Puch, 42, of Reston, with upper-body trauma near a 2011 Honda Civic registered to her. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Local television reports said a person arriving for a morning run had found her in the small parking area. At that point, police publicly identified no suspect and offered no explanation for why Puch had been at the park during the overnight hours.
Detectives from the Major Crimes Bureau and crime-scene specialists began processing the lot and Puch’s vehicle while officers canvassed for information and video. The location presented investigators with a basic set of questions: who had met Puch there, how she had arrived and what had happened between her last known contacts and the moment she was found. An autopsy was requested, and police appealed to the public for information. Later reporting on police records said a preliminary examination found multiple sharp-force injuries and classified Puch’s death as a homicide.
The first major break came not from the park itself but from the restaurant where Puch worked. Investigators learned that she and Alexis Antonio Cedillos-Campos, then 19, were co-workers at a Herndon restaurant and had what Police Chief Kevin Davis described as an intimate relationship. Police obtained surveillance video from the workplace. Authorities said the recording showed Cedillos-Campos leaving with a fixed-blade knife, a pair of black latex gloves and a water bottle during the hours before Puch was killed. Police later alleged that gasoline from his motorcycle was put into the bottle.
Those details shifted the investigation from an unexplained killing toward a case that police said showed preparation. The items were not described as ordinary possessions that happened to be present when the two met. Police said the knife came from the restaurant and that the bottle was used to carry gasoline. Davis said after the arrest that the sequence appeared premeditated to him. Investigators nevertheless charged Cedillos-Campos with second-degree murder, and the police chief acknowledged that detectives and prosecutors would have to evaluate whether the evidence supported any different charge. A charge is an allegation, and Cedillos-Campos is entitled to contest the government’s account.
As detectives reconstructed the hours before dawn, a witness provided another part of the timeline. According to a criminal complaint described by local news organizations, the witness told police that Puch had sent screenshots of her relationship with Cedillos-Campos to his girlfriend. The witness said Cedillos-Campos became angry and said he was going to kill Puch. That alleged statement is important because it places an asserted threat before the killing, but it remains a witness account rather than a judicial finding. Police initially said they were still examining the layers of motive, and later reports connected the screenshots to the alleged dispute.
The witness also said Puch and Cedillos-Campos spoke by telephone at about 1:30 a.m. and arranged to meet. FOX 5 reported that police documents said telephone records supported the existence of the early-morning call. Investigators say the pair met at the Difficult Run Park parking area. What Puch understood about the purpose of the meeting has not been established in the public accounts reviewed for this article. Police have not released a complete transcript or recording of the conversation, and the available reports do not show that anyone else was present for the meeting itself.
Authorities allege that Cedillos-Campos attacked Puch after they met. Police said she was stabbed multiple times. They further alleged that gasoline was poured on her and that there was an unsuccessful effort to ignite it. The county police department publicly confirmed after the arrest that detectives had determined gasoline had been poured on Puch. Later court-document reporting said investigators found black latex gloves and an empty water bottle with a gasoline odor at the scene. The violent details have been limited here to those necessary to explain the evidence and allegations underlying the murder charge.
According to the witness cited in the complaint, another call came several hours after the alleged 1:30 a.m. conversation. The witness told police that Cedillos-Campos called around 4 a.m. and said “he did it” before hanging up. The witness understood the brief statement as referring to Puch. Police later said surveillance video and telephone records corroborated portions of the witness’s broader account. That distinction matters: corroboration of a call or a person’s movements does not automatically prove every statement attributed to a witness, and each piece of evidence would have to be evaluated under courtroom rules if the case goes to trial.
By Aug. 19, detectives said they had identified Cedillos-Campos as their suspect and located him across the state line in Maryland. Fairfax County’s fugitive unit worked with Prince George’s County police and the U.S. Marshals Service to arrest him in Lanham. Police said he was held in Prince George’s County pending extradition to Fairfax County, where he faced second-degree murder. The arrest came roughly 48 hours after Puch was discovered, a rapid turn in an investigation that began without a publicly named suspect.
After the arrest, authorities said Cedillos-Campos spoke with Fairfax County detectives. Davis told reporters that Cedillos-Campos was giving what the chief called a full confession concerning what had happened. The available public reports do not provide a complete recording or transcript of that interview, and a police description of a confession does not replace the court process. The reports reviewed for this article also did not establish whether any defense challenge has been made to the alleged statement, whether Cedillos-Campos has entered a plea, or whether prosecutors ultimately plan to seek a charge different from second-degree murder.
The investigation also brought attention back to Puch herself. Authorities described her as a loving mother of a 3-year-old daughter, and the police department assigned victim-services specialists to assist her family. Her death was first presented to the public as a mystery in a trail parking lot; the following days transformed it into a case centered on a workplace relationship, overnight communications and an alleged plan. The later allegations about the screenshots may help explain why investigators believe the meeting occurred, but they do not lessen the need to distinguish between what police say happened and what has been proved in court.
The second-degree murder charge was the most recent charge confirmed in the reliable material reviewed through Oct. 19. No final adjudication, guilty plea or trial result could be verified from those sources. The investigation described by Fairfax County police established the basis for an arrest and prosecution, but the allegations involving the alleged threat, preparation and killing remain subject to the criminal court process.
Author note: Last updated October 19, 2026.