SHOOTING DEATH Police rectify error in indentification

The victim is from New Jersey, not Dayton.
By LAURE CIOFFI
VINDICATOR NEW CASTLE BUREAU
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- A man fatally shot earlier this week in a low-income housing project wasn't who police initially identified.
Police Chief Tom Sansone said a woman contacted the police department to say that her brother, Rafael Santiago, 26, of Newark, N.J., was in fact the person who was killed early Tuesday on Pin Oak Drive.
Police had initially identified the dead man as Eduardo Perez, 19, of Dayton, Ohio.
Sansone said the man had a valid Ohio driver's license in the name of Eduardo Perez. The chief said it appears that a valid license was somehow issued to Santiago in that name.
The chief said he does not believe the case involves identity theft.
Santiago's sister contacted the police department after being told about her brother's death from a man who was with him the night of the shooting, Sansone said.
Police have not released his name, but said he was from East Liverpool, Ohio.
Sansone said they have taken fingerprints from the dead man to formally identify him as Santiago.
Wanted
Santiago was wanted by police and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Sansone said. The chief said Santiago had numerous aliases, Social Security numbers and birth dates listed on a police record.
He died about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday in a Pittsburgh hospital of a bullet wound to his abdomen. Police suspect the shooting was drug related.
Sansone said Perez and another man came to New Castle from Midland, Pa., to meet a woman whom they could not locate.
The man told police that they went to a bar, then decided to go and buy marijuana and drove to Crestview Gardens.
He told police he dropped off the victim and drove toward Cascade Street, heard shots and drove back to find Santiago shot. The man drove Santiago to Jameson Hospital. He had two other gunshot wounds, police said.
No arrests have been made in the shooting.
cioffi@vindy.com