A 40-year-old man in Nevada is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison after fatally shooting his ex-wife, the 34-year-old mother of his children, just hours after the two appeared in court for a divorce-related hearing that did not go his way.
Roidan Durruthy-Mendoza formally pleaded guilty on Monday to one count of murder with the use of a deadly weapon in the 2023 death of Marillorky Tamayo-Cruz. Jury selection in Durruthy-Mendoza’s murder trial was set to begin on Monday, but he reached an agreement with prosecutors from the Clark County District Attorney’s Office, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Durruthy-Mendoza had previously been charged with attempted murder with a deadly weapon, domestic battery with a deadly weapon, assault, and child abuse, all of which were dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
According to the report, Chief Deputy Special Public Defender Charles Cano informed the court on Monday that his client’s agreement with prosecutors is contingent on him entering an Alford plea in a separate case in which he is accused of sexually assaulting a child under the age of 14.
“If, for whatever reason, that falls apart, then everything falls apart,” Cano allegedly stated in court on Monday.
An Alford plea is functionally equivalent to a guilty plea in that it results in a conviction; however, it allows a defendant to maintain their innocence while admitting that the state has enough evidence to convict them at trial.
Prosecutors reportedly stated that they would seek a life sentence without parole when Durruthy-Mendoza appeared for his sentencing hearing, which is set for October 15.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, at approximately 2:40 p.m. on August 17, 2023, officers from the Las Vegas Metro Police Department responded to a call about a shooting at an apartment complex in the 3900 block of South Jones Boulevard near Flamingo Road in Las Vegas. The caller, later identified as the victim’s daughter, instructed the dispatcher to “hurry up,” adding, “he’s got a gun.” The dispatcher reported that multiple gunshots could be heard in the background of the call.
“There was a lot of commotion and screaming, and [the daughter] sounded as though she walked away from the phone,” police wrote in a probable cause affidavit. “When [she] got back to the phone, she said her mother was dead.”
When first responders arrived at the scene, they discovered two more victims with gunshot wounds, in addition to Tamayo-Cruz, who was pronounced dead on the spot. The other two victims, one with a gunshot wound to the elbow and the other with a gunshot wound to the eye, were taken to a nearby hospital.
Durruthy-Mendoza, the suspected shooter, was quickly identified.
Investigators on the scene found 11 cartridge cases and discovered that a security door and the apartment’s front door had been “shot off.” Tamayo-Cruz’s body was discovered in the hallway between the apartment’s bedroom and bathroom. She had received a fatal gunshot wound to the forehead. A 9mm handgun was discovered next to the body.
At around 3:10 p.m., cameras caught Durruthy-Mendoza parking his car in front of the LVMPD Records and Fingerprint Bureau and exiting wearing a shirt “covered in apparent blood.” He went inside, asked to speak with an officer, and then returned outside to sit on a bench.
When police arrived, they noticed his shirt was “saturated with apparent blood” and asked Durruthy-Mendoza about what had happened.
“I killed my wife,” he allegedly said. Durruthy-Mendoza also claimed that his wife’s daughter stabbed him in the left shoulder.
In an interview with police, the daughter stated that she was with her mother just before the shooting. During that time, her mother informed her that she had won the court case against Durruthy-Mendoza and would receive “the house, the truck, and custody of the children.”
A witness who was present during the shooting told police that Durruthy-Mendoza shot and kicked down the bedroom door where his ex-wife was hiding before shooting her three times in the head. He also claimed Durruthy-Mendoza said, “I told you not to joke around with me.”
Durruthy-Mendoza and Tamayo-Cruz shared custody of a two-year-old child, who was present at the apartment during the shooting and was unharmed.
