Jose Alfredo Benitez, a 39-year-old Hispanic/Latino man, was killed late on the night of Friday, December 4, 2009, in Mount Rainier, Maryland. Around 10:18 p.m., Prince George’s County police rushed to the 2500 block of Queens Chapel Road after a call about gunfire, and they found him there on his own block, struck by a gunshot wound. The street was still awake with the usual hum of apartment-life when the violence cut through it, and by the time officers arrived, there was nothing left to do
but secure the scene and begin asking the questions that come after a life is taken—who was there, who ran, who knew what was about to happen.
The shock didn’t stay contained to that one corner of Queens Chapel. Just hours later, before dawn on Saturday, December 5, police discovered another man dead only a few blocks away on the same road, and investigators said they couldn’t yet tell whether the killings were connected. For residents in the West Hyattsville–Mount Rainier area, it would have felt like the night kept spilling into morning without ever letting the neighborhood catch its breath.
Within days, police publicly tied Benitez’s death to what they described as a domestic-related homicide and announced arrests. Bonifacio Martinez, 42, of Adelphi; Carlos Romero, 25, of Hyattsville; and Yonis Hernandez Argueta, 17, of Chillum were each charged with first-degree murder in connection with Benitez’s shooting, and reporting at the time said they were taken into custody on Saturday, the day after the killing. Authorities did not explain what they meant by “domestic-related,” and they said they still weren’t sure whether Benitez’s death was linked to the other homicide discovered nearby that same night.
Later public updates about the case indicated the prosecution did not end at the charging stage. A long-running Prince George’s County homicide log that tracked subsequent court developments reported that Martinez, Romero, and Argueta each entered guilty pleas on January 3, 2011, after the initial first-degree murder charges brought against them in the aftermath of the shooting.
