Before dawn on November 30, 2016, a concerned neighbor noticed a man lying in the roadway on the 5300 block of Crittenden Street near Edmonston Road in Hyattsville and called for help. Officers arrived around 6:40 a.m. to find Ramiro Moya, a 40-year-old male from Bladensburg, suffering from a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and detectives opened a homicide investigation while they worked to piece together what had happened in the quiet stretch of residential street.
In the first hours and days after the shooting, there was no public suspect identified and no immediate arrest announced. The basic facts were stark: Moya had been shot, his body left in the street, and investigators were still trying to establish a motive and who pulled the trigger.
Over time, what initially looked like a street-side killing was reframed in federal court as something colder and more deliberate: a murder-for-hire plot. Federal prosecutors said the plan formed in November 2016, when Miguel Antonio Renderos sought someone to kill the intended victim for $10,000, driven by resentment tied to an alleged romantic relationship between his wife and the man he wanted dead—after he had let that man live in the basement of his home years earlier. According to the government’s account, Jose David Navarro-Cervellon acted as the middleman, connecting Renderos to Miguel Angel Ayala Rivera, described as the leader of an MS-13 clique, and helping coordinate the operation through calls and logistics.
The government said the days leading up to the killing were not spontaneous: Ayala Rivera and another MS-13 member, Luis Cruz Hernandez, stayed in a hotel in College Park that Navarro paid for, and the group carried out surveillance in and around the victim’s residence. On the morning of November 30, prosecutors said Navarro drove Ayala Rivera and Cruz Hernandez to the residence, where Ayala Rivera shot and killed the victim, and then drove them away to collect payment from Renderos afterward.
That alleged conspiracy eventually produced multiple prosecutions and severe sentences. Navarro-Cervellon was tried in federal court and convicted of murder-for-hire conspiracy, murder-for-hire, and a firearm offense tied to a crime of violence resulting in death; he was sentenced to life in prison, and his convictions were later affirmed on appeal. Prosecutors also said Ayala Rivera and Renderos pleaded guilty to their roles and were awaiting sentencing, while Cruz Hernandez pleaded guilty and received a 51-year federal prison sentence.
