PARIS — Police say they have identified two suspects in the hit-and-run death of a 16-year-old Leavitt Area High School student in March.

Paris police Chief Michael Madden said Friday that one suspect is from Auburn. The second is being identified only as a resident of the Lewiston-Auburn area.

Both were under surveillance but had not been arrested, Madden said.

He said he did not believe the suspects were known to the victim nor does he consider them a flight risk.

Xavier Fuentes’ body was found by a passing motorist on an unlit stretch of Route 117 in Paris sometime before 8:30 p.m. on March 15. He had attended a movie at Flagship Cinema in Oxford with family members earlier in the evening but left and began walking to his grandparents’ home in Turner when he was hit, police have said.

Investigators believed he was struck by a truck or an SUV near the intersection of Brett Hill Road, a short distance west of downtown South Paris and about 4 miles from the movie theater.

Madden said police executed search warrants Friday, seizing a car in Lewiston, a car from a Hertz car rental business in Bangor and evidence at a suspect’s house in Auburn. The suspect was not at the house at the time of the search, but others not involved in the case were there, Madden said.

He said officers from the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, Maine State Police, Lewiston and Auburn police departments and Oxford County Sherriff’s Office have assisted the Paris Police Department in its six-week investigation.

“It’s moving quickly,” Madden said of the investigation. He said information leading to Friday’s searches was gathered over the past month from the agencies involved in the case. The officers are continuing to gather evidence and interview people.

Madden said the information from the criminal investigation units in Lewiston and Auburn have been “invaluable” in their search for suspects.

The news of the suspects came one day after a Portland-based engineering company donated $1,000 to the cash reward of $1,500 for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the hit-and-run. The identifications were not a result of the additional reward, Madden said.

Fuentes’ mother, Sheila Cole of Greenwood, works at the Oxford Town Office and his stepfather, Ron Cole, is a Norway police officer.

His mother had publicly pleaded with the driver several days after the accident to come forward and be identified.

“You’ve got to come forward,” she said in a March 19 interview with the Sun Journal. “You have to do it, not just for our family’s sake, but for the sake of yourself, for your own family and loved ones. You need to come forward and confess to this and own it and say you’re sorry. I want an apology. I want our questions answered.”

ldixon@sunjournal.com