Pedro Adrian Dominguez, a 33-year-old Hispanic male from Greeley, Colorado, was killed on November 23, 2015, near Bridgeport, Nebraska. On December 4, a landowner discovered a sealed barrel in Red Willow Creek under a bridge on County Road 104, east of Bayard. When law enforcement opened it, they found Dominguez s body. An autopsy identified him by fingerprints on December 8 and determined he died from a single gunshot to the back left side of the head, with the bullet traveling left to right,
back to front, and downward.
Investigators learned that Dominguez had been shot while riding in a vehicle outside Bridgeport. Attention quickly focused on 25-year-old Zachary Mueller of Nebraska. He was arrested and charged, later pleading not guilty to first-degree murder along with related weapons offenses. During pretrial proceedings and testimony, authorities detailed the recovery of the barrel, the autopsy findings, and statements Mueller made while in custody that helped establish the sequence of events.
In January 2017, a jury convicted Mueller of first-degree murder. He was also found guilty of using a firearm to commit a felony and being a felon in possession of a firearm. In March 2017, a Morrill County judge sentenced him to life imprisonment for murder, plus consecutive terms of 20 to 40 years for the firearm offenses. The Nebraska Supreme Court later affirmed the conviction and sentence, preserving the findings that Dominguez was shot in a vehicle and that his body was disposed of in the creek east of Bayard.
Dominguez s death was initially recorded publicly as occurring in Nebraska in late November 2015, with family obituaries listing November 23 as the date. The discovery of the barrel in Red Willow Creek two weeks later transformed a missing-person worry into a homicide investigation that ultimately resulted in Mueller s arrest, trial, and life sentence.
