EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: How Gustavo Cantu was captured in Texas for Green Bay murder

GREEN BAY, Wis. (WBAY) - Gustavo Cantu has been bound over for trial, charged with first-degree murder for the shooting death of Randall Denny in Green Bay back in April.

Action 2 News received exclusively the bodycam video showing the moment Cantu was taken into custody in the high-stakes arrest in Texas.

Officials say he was uncooperative, so they had to break a window to get him out of the vehicle.

But how did they know he was hiding out in Texas? Investigators say it was a “see something, say something” moment from a neighboring witness just in time.

Police in Texas believe the Cantus were on their way to Mexico. “One more day they would have been there,” “Everything was loaded into that vehicle.”

“Their plan was to split up, which is what happened, and I think ultimately their destination they were going to try to go to Mexico,” Investigator Mike Slaughter with the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office’s Special Operations Division, said.

But Kerr County investigators say the plan was interrupted when they received a tip from a witness who noticed suspicious activity in the neighborhood.

“She kind of did her own research on her own and kind of found out the last name of Cantu, and she just said, she kind of did a internet search and the pictures popped up from from up there from Green Bay, and she was able to she was like, ‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s these guys,’” Lt. Scott Gaige, Kerry County Sheriff’s Office, said.

Authorities quickly ran surveillance on the house, watching for Gustavo and Alejandro Cantu, the brothers from Green Bay wanted for the April 30 murder of Denny, whose body was found in the street near Western and Perkins avenues, allegedly at Gustavo’s hands.

“I called the Wisconsin police department talk to the detective that was in charge of that case, and he and I coordinated back and forth over a period of several hours, just gathering intel,” Slaughter said.

“We did a couple of drive-bys” Gaige said, and waited for some movement, which came six hours into their stakeout at the house.

“They got into the vehicle to drive. I coordinated with the rest of the team and ultimately, we stopped them about a mile-and-a-half down the road,” said Slaughter.

With weapons drawn, deputies cautiously approached the vehicle.

“Let me see your hands.”

“I see a passenger. Passenger, let me see your hands. Roll down the window. Roll down the window.”

More units arrived.

“Put your hands up now or you are gonna get shot.”

Gustavo and the female passenger are uncooperative and remain in the car.

“Roll that window down!”

Lt Gaige said, “He had his hands up. He wasn’t, he was non-compliant to any of the verbal commands. We can see his hands from our, from our angles, so we made the call to go up.”

Police break a window.

“Get down! Get out of the car. Get your hands up.”

“He verbalized to me that I had the wrong person, which we knew we didn’t. I did watch him. Plus, I had a nice, big, shiny picture of him, right? Right in the car with me. But that’s really all he said, ‘You got the wrong guy,’” Slaughter told us.

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“Once we extracted him we were actually able to see the female. She was visible down on that front passenger seat,” said Gaige.

No weapons were found in the car after both were taken into custody.

Gustavo remained uncooperative.

According to Gaige, “We briefly talked to him. You know, we’d asked him, ‘Hey, is your brother, is your brother at the house?’ And he was real hesitant about it about the answer, and then he’s like, ‘No, no, no, he’s not.’”

Authorities say that pause gave them probable cause to think Alejandro was inside the house, so they got a search warrant.

They conducted it that night with the help of special ops.

Alejandro Cantu was not in the house. Law enforcement found drug paraphernalia, empty cell phone boxes, and limited furniture.

“It almost looked like they were just camping out in there, getting ready to move from one location to the next,” Slaughter said.

But Gustavo’s brother, Alejandro, didn’t go where investigators thought he would go.

“We’re waiting to see if we’re gonna get a call from, you know, Border Patrol or something like that, or Customs, and say, ‘Hey, got these guys crossing into Mexico.’ When we heard, man, they went back to Green Bay, I was like, wow!” Gaige said.

By utilizing the Green Bay Police Department’s license plate reader cameras, the technology identified a vehicle Alejandro was traveling in. Police located it at a hotel on the east side, and he was taken into custody.

Now both Cantu brothers are behind bars in Brown County, each being held on $2 million cash bond.

“For the you know, the family up there and everything like that. I think it was a, it was a good deal on our part that we were able to give them some closure to get these people caught,” said Gaige.

“I wish we would have got both,” Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said, “but, like we said, I felt better once I knew he was the shooter. About as good as we were going to get.”

“Don’t come to Kerry County, they say. Not for them bad guys,” the sheriff added.

Gustavo Cantu and the woman taken into custody with him in Texas last month will not face charges there. Authorities say it doesn’t make sense to extradite them back to Texas for what would be misdemeanor charges when they’re facing more serious charges in Brown County, Wisconsin.

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