Two men pleaded guilty to the brutal machete slaying of a man found dead in the middle of a quiet New Jersey street nearly three years ago, prosecutors announced Sunday.
The Monmouth County prosecutor's office said Omar Rivera-Rojas, 32, and Alberto Rojas-Hernandez, 20, admitted to killing the man found on Howell's Hurley Pond Road in Oct. 2019 following a fight that broke out between the three men.
Both Lakewood men pled guilty to aggravated manslaughter before a judge in Monmouth County on Friday, and will face a sentencing hearing next March. Contact information for their lawyers was not immediately known.
Domingo Merino-Rafael, a 33-year-old man also from Lakewood, was discovered around 3 a.m. Oct. 18, 2019, by a person passing through the area. The man was found dead, laying face down with significant head trauma.
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Investigators initially suspected Merino-Rafael was the victim of a hit-and-run collision, but later determined the man had been struck multiple times in the back of the head with a machete.
Merino-Rafael was possibly trying to escape his attackers when he jumped out of a car and tried to run down the Howell street, then apparently was caught and murdered, his body left in the middle of the road, the law enforcement source familiar with the case told News 4 during the early days of the murder investigation.
Rivera-Rojas and Rojas-Hernandez, uncle and nephew, face 22 and 20 years in prison, respectively.
