Rolando Almonte, a 23-year-old Hispanic/Latino male, was killed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 23, 2011. Online homicide listings place his death on the 1300 block of South 15th Street, a South Philadelphia location where his name appears among the city’s 2011 homicide victims. Another online report identified him more fully as Rolando Antonio Lugo Almonte and described him as someone who had come to Philadelphia from the Dominican Republic, where he left behind family in the Los Caimoníes community of Santiago Rodríguez.
The killing was described as a shooting that happened on a Wednesday night while Rolando was preparing to close the doors of a bodega he owned or operated. According to the Spanish-language account, the person who shot him was masked, and the attacker was not publicly identified at the time. Family members reportedly believed the violence may have been connected to a dispute between Rolando and the shooter, but the available public reports did not give a detailed account of what led up to the confrontation.
News of his death reached his home community in the Dominican Republic with force. The report described his parents, Cecilia de Jesús Almonte and Rolando Antonio Lugo, as residents of Los Caimoníes, and said his remains were expected to be brought back there for funeral services and burial. The same account noted that Rolando had been in Philadelphia for about two years and five months and had been working in the bodega business after traveling from the Dominican Republic.
Publicly available online information does not identify an arrested suspect, and the reports located do not describe charges, a trial, or a conviction connected to Rolando’s killing. The most specific suspect description available is that the shooter was masked and unknown at the time of reporting. The Spanish-language report also stated that it was unknown whether the attacker had been detained by police, and later online summaries continue to describe the case without confirmed public details of an arrest or prosecution.
