McALLEN — A man wanted in connection with the fatal shooting of a Reynosa police officer may have crossed into the United States dressed as a clown, Mexican state police said Thursday.

Tamaulipas investigators alerted U.S. authorities Wednesday that the suspect may have crossed the Rio Grande illegally while wearing a costume as a disguise.

On Monday, accomplices sneaked the man through the Reynosa in a garbage cart to help him get out of town, said Fernando Miranda Guerrero, chief of homicide investigations for the state police.

“We went to the river and searched along it with the help of the municipal police, but we did not get anything,” he said in Spanish.

Police believe that the man shot and killed 18-year-old Filiberto Cortez de la Cruz on Monday as the officer and his partner responded to a robbery call in the Aztlán neighborhood, south of Reynosa.

Cortez de la Cruz, who had graduated from police academy a month before, engaged the suspect in a foot pursuit and caught him around the legs as the man tried to climb over a brick fence.

But the suspect responded by firing several shots, hitting Cortez de la Cruz once in the face with a .38-caliber Super gun. The officer’s partner fired several rounds at the suspect, but the man managed to escape.

Then, the man attempted to enter a neighbor’s house but was turned away at the door, Miranda Guerrero said.

“The suspect tells the victim to just let him hide, but the homeowner says no and they have another struggle,” he said. “By then, the thief did not have a gun. He had already gotten rid of it.”

The homeowner overpowered the man and ran outside to alert police.

“But we could not find him after that,” Miranda Guerrero said.

Cortez de la Cruz was honored Tuesday in a ceremony attended by friends and municipal authorities. His body was buried in his hometown of Alamo in the state of Veracruz.

“We have been responding to every tip we get,” Miranda Guerrero said. “We feel impotent, because it was a fellow officer who died.”

Investigators describe the suspect as a 5 foot, 7 inch Hispanic male in his 40s. He is believed to have a medium build, short, straight hair with some white in it, a mustache and pockmarked cheeks.

Reynosa police urge anyone with information about this case to call 011-52-899-932-3333.