On a summer night in Hartford, Connecticut, the life of 27-year-old Hispanic male Benjamin Benji Baez Jr. was tragically cut short. Shortly before midnight on June 11, 2003, Baez was sitting in the passenger seat of a friend's parked car on Main Street when another man approached the vehicle. A verbal argument broke out, ending abruptly when the man fired a gun, striking Baez in the chest. His friend rushed him to St.
Francis Hospital, but the single gunshot wound proved fatal, and he was pronounced dead.
The immediate investigation by Hartford Police was met with a wall of silence. Although many people witnessed the shooting, few were willing to cooperate or provide official statements, causing the case to stall. For years, the murder of Benjamin Baez remained one of Hartford's unsolved cold cases, a source of profound and prolonged grief for his family, who had suffered the murder of his brother, Harry Baez, just a year earlier. The case was even featured on the six of diamonds in a deck of cold case playing cards distributed to inmates within the Connecticut corrections system in hopes of generating new leads.
A significant breakthrough finally came more than 14 years later. In October 2017, Hartford Police detectives from the Cold Case/Shooting Task Force Unit arrested 40-year-old Rafael "Felo" Ortiz in New York. Investigators had uncovered new evidence linking the former Hartford resident to the crime. During the trial, prosecutors presented evidence that the fatal confrontation stemmed from a dispute over drug sales. The court heard that Baez had asked to sell drugs for Ortiz, who was identified as a major drug dealer, and when Ortiz refused, Baez threatened to rob him, which led to the deadly shooting. In February 2019, a jury found Ortiz guilty of murder, and he was subsequently sentenced to 50 years in prison, finally bringing a measure of justice to the family of Benjamin Baez.
