Man arrested, accused of strangling woman at Gwinnett home

Investigators believe a man strangled a woman inside their home before crashing his car near the crime scene, Gwinnett County police said Monday.

At 12:20 p.m. Friday, officers were called to an apartment complex in the 1600 block of Graves Road, near Norcross, after receiving a report that a woman had been killed.

“When officers arrived, they located Marisol Ballestas Brochero deceased inside her residence,” police said Friday.

Her cause of death was not immediately released, but investigators called the 32-year-old’s death suspicious.

On Monday, police said a suspect, Fabricio Cerchiaro Pinto, 34, was charged with malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault.

After Brochero’s body was found, Pinto was involved in a single-vehicle crash about a mile away at the intersection of Graves Road and Dawson Boulevard, according to police. Pinto remained in the hospital Monday, but his condition was not released.

According to his arrest warrants, Pinto strangled Brochero earlier Friday.

“Said accused unlawfully and with malice aforethought caused the death of Marisol Ballestas Brochero, a human being, by strangulation,” Pinto’s warrant states.

The relationship between Pinto and Brochero was not released. But both had the same address, and the incident was being investigated as domestic violence, according to police.

It was the second homicide in Gwinnett attributed to domestic violence in two weeks.

On Oct. 31, Elajia Whitley had just left her job as a phlebotomy tech at BioLife Plasma Services on Pleasant Hill Road, near Duluth, when she was shot to death by her ex-boyfriend, investigators previously said. She was 21.

Caprice Hudson, 23, approached Whitley in the parking lot as she was leaving, according to investigators. He fled the scene around 3 p.m., witnesses told police. Hudson was later spotted 140 miles away in Columbia County, according to police.