Pregnant 18-year-old Savanah Soto disappears in Leon Valley near San Antonio after missing induction appointment, police say
A CLEAR Alert for Savanah Soto and boyfriend Matthew Guerra ended two days later when both were found dead inside her car, a case Bexar County's medical examiner later ruled a double homicide.
Savanah Soto, 18 and pregnant, was last seen in Leon Valley, Texas, on Friday, Dec. 22, 2023, and did not show up for a scheduled hospital appointment to be induced, according to San Antonio-area police accounts of the case. Her disappearance, alongside boyfriend Matthew Guerra, set off a CLEAR Alert and a two-day search that ended when both were found dead inside her car.
The CLEAR Alert was issued Dec. 25, with authorities noting Soto was last seen near the 6000 block of Grissom Road around 2 p.m. that day, driving a gray 2013 Kia Optima bearing temporary tag 4289D57, according to reporting from ABC13 Houston and News 4 San Antonio. Her family identified the man found with her as boyfriend Matthew Guerra.
What is not yet resolved, at the time of this account, is who was responsible. San Antonio Police Chief William McManus told reporters investigators were "waiting on a report from the medical examiner" before confirming the identities of the two people found in the vehicle, and separately said, per News 4 San Antonio, "Detectives, right now, are looking at this as a possible murder. But we don't know for sure." Police released surveillance footage seeking to identify persons of interest but had not named or arrested a suspect in the days immediately following the discovery.
What the search found
The bodies were discovered on Tuesday, Dec. 26, around 4 p.m. at the 5900 block of Danny Kaye, at the Colinas at Medical Apartments in San Antonio's Medical Center area, according to News 4 San Antonio's account of the case. KENS 5 characterized the discovery as a "perplexing crime scene," with San Antonio police investigating it as a capital murder case.
The Bexar County Medical Examiner's office determined that both Soto and Guerra died of gunshot wounds to the head, and the deaths were ruled homicides, per News 4 San Antonio's reporting on the medical examiner's findings.
The family's account
Soto's relatives described a young woman planning for her child's arrival, not fleeing one. "There's no reason why she would just get up and go off and do that," her mother, Gloria Cordova, told News 4 San Antonio. Soto's sister-in-law, Joanie Wasil, said, "We were supposed to celebrate Christmas with [Savanah] and the baby. All she wanted was that baby."
What it signals
The missed induction appointment is what converted an ordinary no-show into an active law-enforcement search within hours rather than days — the kind of fixed, verifiable data point (a scheduled medical procedure, a specific time) that gives alert systems like Texas's CLEAR Alert something concrete to act on, distinct from a general missing-persons report. The gap between the discovery of the bodies and any named suspect, at the time of this account, is itself part of the story: police were still working from surveillance footage rather than an arrest.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by ABC13 Houston, KENS 5 and News 4 San Antonio. It restores a story originally published on this site in December 2023; figures are as reported at the time.