South Florida family speaks out after accused killer caught in Peru nearly 30 years later

Nearly 30 years after a 22-year-old was gunned down at a Miami gas station on Thanksgiving Day, authorities have arrested a longtime fugitive in Peru who had been living under a stolen identity and working for the government as an air traffic controller.

Nicole Modrono still remembers the last photo ever taken with her younger brother, Jimmy Schwarz, smiling together on her wedding day. Schwarz was killed on Thanksgiving night in 1996.

“The man in my life was my brother,” Modrono said. “The only man that I trusted anyway, because the role models that I had were no good.”

A life cut short

Schwarz had stepped into the role of protector early in life, looking out for Modrono and their mother, Eileen Motte, in a home marked by domestic violence…

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