Francisco Lara-Garcia: Maryland Man Sentenced After Murdering Ex-Girlfriend and Throwing Her Body Off a Bridge
Francisco Lara-Garcia, 33, will spend 40 years in prison for killing his ex-girlfriend, 20-year-old Keylin Chavez Dominguez, and dumping her body off a bridge in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Lara-Garcia and Chavez Dominguez had been together since early 2021, when they lived in Honduras.
When they moved to Rockville, Maryland, the pair continued their relationship and lived together but in August 2022, they broke up and the victim started seeing a new boyfriend.
But they continued living together even after she began dating someone new, which reportedly made Lara-Garcia jealous.
According to Law&Crime, the last time anyone heard from Chavez Dominguez was December 30, 2022, when she texted her new boyfriend.
When she didn’t contact him the next day, he became worried and started searching for her. He reached out to Lara-Garcia, who denied knowing anything about where she was.
On January 2, 2023, Lara-Garcia reported Chavez Dominguez missing after her family insisted he did so.
However, the police quickly noticed that his story didn’t add up, and his accuracies about her disappearance.
Weeks passed with no answers—until a man walking his dog made a heartbreaking discovery.
On January 28, 2023, under the eastbound Intercounty Connector in Silver Spring, a dog walker found a woman’s body hidden inside trash bags.
The remains were later identified as those of Chavez Dominguez and autopsy results showed that she had been strangled and beaten.
After the chilling discovery, investigators say Lara-Garcia tried to flee the country and might have been heading back to Honduras.
However, The U.S. Marshals Service were able to track him down and arrest him in Missouri on February 1, 2023.
After being read his rights, Lara-Garcia admitted to killing Chavez Dominguez during his interview with detectives.
He said it happened on the evening of December 30, 2022, when the two were listening to music in their apartment. Lara-Garcia became angry when she refused to change the playlist.
He then punched her, continued beating her on the floor, and strangled her until she died.
"He knocked her down to the ground and straddled her, continuing to punch her and hit her head on the floor. He then manually strangled her, and when he stopped, she was dead,” police wrote in their official statement.
After the killing, he placed her body in two trash bags, drove around looking for a place to hide it, and eventually threw her off a bridge. He then drove to Philadelphia to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy praised investigators, saying,
“This defendant lied to police and Chavez Dominguez’s loved ones for nearly a month while they desperately kept hope alive that she may have been found unharmed.”
Fot more true crime stories and updates on other high-profile cases sign up for our free newsletter here.
Comments
Post a Comment