Salem Police Take Wanted Carjacking Suspect Into Custody

Police arrested 20-year-old Marco Antonio Villarreal after a short stand-off at a home in southeast Salem Christmas eve.

Marco Antonio Villarreal. Photo: Marion County Sheriff's Office.

(SALEM) - A Salem man wanted by Linn County authorities for questioning in connection with an Albany carjacking and a Talbot Road armed robbery was arrested Sunday by Salem police at a home in southeast Salem.

Salem police took 20-year-old Marco Antonio Villarreal into custody on an unrelated parole violation warrant.

Salem police spokesman Lt. Bill Kohlmeyer said they received an anonymous call from someone who said Villarreal was at the southeast Salem residence located on Buttonwood Court.

Kohlmeyer said it took officers about an hour to talk Villarreal out of the home.

Villarreal is a “person of interest” in an armed carjacking that occurred Dec. 15th outside the Albany Mervyn’s and an armed robbery on Talbot Road that occurred the following day.

The other suspect in the crimes, 31-year-old Jason Robert Desantis, also from Salem, shot and killed himself last week on property near Turner when sheriff’s deputies arrived to look for him. Detectives say that Desantis and Villarreal were together in the Talbot Road incident, in which they got into a house and then stole a car.

Desantis had been identified by detectives as the carjacker and they say he was the “initial aggressor” in the Talbot Road robbery.

Villarreal is being held at the Marion County Jail.