Worcester men facing murder charges
Pair suspected in brutal killing of mother, daughter
Two men were charged Tuesday with murdering a mother and her 11-year-old daughter last week as they sat in a SUV parked near the victims’ home on a residential street in Worcester.
Karel S. Mangual and Dejan D. Belnavis, both of Worcester, were allegedly seen running with guns in their hands seconds after gunfire broke out on Englewood Avenue around 3 p.m. on March 5, leaving a Nissan Rogue riddled with bullet holes and Chasity M. Nunez, 27, and her daughter, Zella Aria Nunez, mortally wounded.
“Security video shows the victims vehicle parked on the side of the road and two men walk up to the vehicle and start shooting at the vehicle,” Worcester police wrote in a report filed in court. “Security video shows two people after the shooting running away with firearms in their hands.”
Mangual, 28, was arraigned in Worcester District Court on Tuesday. Not guilty pleas were entered on his behalf and he was ordered held without bail. Previously filed charges of armed assault with intent to murder were dismissed.
Belnavis, 27, was captured in San Diego on Monday, ending a nearly week-long manhunt after police connected him to a white Acura sedan the two shooters got into before speeding away from the shooting scene. Belvanis will appear in San Diego Superior Court on Friday for an extradition hearing, a spokesperson for the San Diego County district attorney’s office said.
In court papers, police outlined the investigation that unfolded after the killings. An alert neighbor took down the Acura’s license plate number and provided it to police within an hour of the shootings. Police located the owner of the car, a North Grafton resident who said he had lent the car to Belnavis for the past several months.
Police checked various security cameras and saw that two men drove the Acura through the area before the shootings, according to a police report. Police also determined the route the car took through the city after the shootings before it got onto the Massachusetts Turnpike, the report said.
An image taken on the Mass. Pike in Charlton showed the white Acura at 3:34 p.m. with two men inside, police wrote. Police received emergency permission to use the car’s on-board data systems to track it to Hartford, the report stated.
According to police, the men parked the car near the home of a relative of Belnavis’s. Surveillance video showed two men getting out of the Acura; both wearing distinctive black and purple shoes similar to those worn by the shooters.
“The video shows the face of Karel Mangual and shows that the two males are wearing footwear similar to the footwear worn by the two shooters,” police wrote.
A Worcester police officer who has known Mangual since his childhood identified him as one of the people getting out of the Acura in Hartford. One day after the killings, police pinged a phone belonging to Belnavis and tracked it to “an address outside Worcester,” the report said.
Police staked out the address and saw a blue Hyundai Electra leave the house and head toward Worcester. Police pulled over the Electra and arrested Mangual. They also recovered Belnavis’ cellphone which they had been pinging, according to the report.
How Belnavis got to California was not clear Tuesday.
Authorities have not disclosed a motive for the killings.
A wake for Nunez and her daughter will be held Thursday at the Callahan Fay Caswell Funeral Home in Worcester.