Edgardo Luis Bermudez-Melendez, a 31-year-old male from West York, Pennsylvania, was last seen on the evening of March 13, 2022, before what began as a missing-person case turned into a homicide investigation. He had reportedly been operating a gray 2014 Mazda 3, and authorities said he was last known to be wearing a white T-shirt, gray shorts, a black windbreaker jacket, and running sneakers. His disappearance was reported on March 14, but investigators later alleged that he had already been killed in York City on March 13.
Days passed before his body was discovered on the morning of March 19, 2022, in a wooded, rural area near Holtwood Road and the Norman Wood Bridge in Martic Township, Lancaster County. The location was far from where investigators believed the violence actually happened, and the discovery shifted the case from a search for a missing man to a murder investigation. The Lancaster County coroner determined that Bermudez-Melendez died from gunshot wounds, and Pennsylvania State Police treated the case as a homicide.
Investigators later focused on Carlos Omar Rivera-Rivera II, a 24-year-old York-area man. According to reports citing the criminal complaint, Rivera-Rivera was accused of fatally shooting Bermudez-Melendez inside a garage on West Gas Avenue in York. A witness allegedly told investigators he was walking into the garage when he heard a loud boom that he believed was a gunshot. Police alleged that after the shooting, Rivera-Rivera moved Bermudez-Melendez's body out of York and transported it to Martic Township, where the body was pushed or discarded down an embankment along Holtwood Road.
The complaint also described a possible motive tied to an earlier conflict. A confidential source reportedly told a detective that one or two months before the killing, there had been a conversation at the home of Rivera-Rivera and his girlfriend about Rivera-Rivera having been jumped. Rivera-Rivera allegedly believed Bermudez-Melendez had been involved or had set him up, and investigators used that alleged grievance as part of the story behind the fatal encounter.
On August 16, 2022, about five months after Bermudez-Melendez was reported missing and later found dead, Pennsylvania State Police filed charges against Rivera-Rivera in connection with the homicide. He was charged with criminal homicide, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, and abuse of a corpse. Court reports cited by local media said bail was denied. Later reporting stated that the case was bound over for a potential trial, but the available online sources reviewed did not show a final conviction or sentencing outcome.
