IE Cold Case: Arrest Made After Nearly A Decade Of Waiting After Fatal Shooting

INLAND EMPIRE, CA — Authorities have made an arrest in a nine-year-old cold case in San Bernardino County, investigators say. A suspect in the 2016 shooting of a man in his Apple Valley home was arrested this week.

On Tuesday, Michael Austin Roberts, who was already in custody at West Valley Detention Center on an unrelated charge, was identified as the suspect in the fatal shooting of 54-year-old Michael Brooks, Jr.

The suspect, now 27, was 18 when this crime occurred.

Roberts, identified as a potential suspect in late January, was arrested by the San Bernardino County Probation Department officers in Hesperia on Jan. 29, on a no-bail warrant out of Denver, Colorado.

"This week, he was interviewed by investigators on Tuesday, and at the conclusion of the interview, Roberts was arrested and booked at West Valley Detention Center for the murder of Michael Brooks," according to a department spokesperson. He was being held on $1 million bail and was slated to appear at Victorville Superior Court on March 9.

No information about the Colorado warrant has yet been released.

For almost ten years, the investigation into Michael Brooks Jr.'s death has been unsolved.

August 10, 2016, Apple Valley Station deputies responded to the 12600 block of Apple Valley Road, Apple Valley, after a man was found dead inside the home. There was no one else inside the residence at the time his body was found.

The decedent, identified as Brooks, was found to have died from a single gunshot wound. He was 54 years old and left behind a family grieving for answers.

After an extensive investigation, multiple people of interest were identified and interviewed. Investigators exhausted all leads at that time, and the case of Michael Brooks's murder eventually went cold.

A suspect was never identified.

It took a reopening of the case in the fall of 2025 to glean answers and potential leads.

"The Sheriff’s Cold Case Homicide Team routinely reexamines cases that have been previously exhausted and works to develop new information and leads," a spokesperson for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said. "In 2025, the Cold Case Homicide Team resumed the investigation into Michael Brooks’ murder. It was as a result of that investigation that Michael Roberts was identified as a suspect in the murder."

According to Brooks's father, interviewed by the VV Daily Press in 2018, the waiting for answers was "rough. I say there’s always a reason. But when it happens to you, in your family, you have to wonder why."