The ex-boyfriend of Amanda Dabrowski was found guilty of stabbing her to death inside a Worcester restaurant while she was attending a book club meeting in 2019.
Carlos Asencio, 32, was found guilty of first-degree murder and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon — connected to assaulting a restaurant patron who attempted to stop the attack — by a Worcester Superior jury on Tuesday following an eight-day trial. Asencio faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 29.
“While no verdict will ever bring Amanda back, we are relieved that a jury found this man responsible for taking her from us. We know he can never harm another person again.” Dabrowski’s family wrote in a statement released following the verdict. “We ask that people continue to keep Amanda in their thoughts as she will continue to live through family and friends.”
Dabrowski was attending her first meeting of the O’Connor’s Books, Brews and Banter Reading group on July 3, 2019, in O’Connor’s Restaurant, according to Herald reporting at the time. Surveillance video from the restaurant showed her smiling and happy moments before Asencio, who had briefly dated her, found her and then stabbed her 15 to 20 times.
“The loss of Amanda was devastating and tragic. Our thoughts and prayers are with her and her family. No one should ever have to go through something as horrible as this,” said Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. in a statement.
Vladir Chaves, 47, of Roxbury, pleaded guilty Wednesday to second-degree murder for stabbing his wife Dora Chaves, 38, to death in their Clarence Street apartment in Roxbury in 2019. Judge Anthony Campo sentenced Chaves to life, but with the possibility of parole after 20 years.
“I need to go to jail. I am ready to be arrested,” Vladir Chaves allegedly told police when they showed up at the apartment at around 12:30 p.m. on Aug. 11, 2019.
The pair had been arguing the night before the stabbing, prosecutor Ian Polumbaum said at Chaves’ arraignment the day after the killing, and Dora Chaves had gone to get the police to ask her husband to leave.
Her husband would return the day of the murder to talk, but it escalated into shouting. Witnesses in the building told police that they heard Dora Chaves screaming before Vladir Chaves exited the room with blood on his clothing.
Carmelo “Melo” Kercado Jr., 40, of New Bedford, will spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of Stephen Bodden, 27, and Fabio Tavares, 28, in the fall of 2017.
A Bristol County jury convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder and illegal firearms charges. He was sentenced to consecutive lifetime prison sentences with no possibility of parole.
“I want to thank the jury for holding the defendant accountable for the execution of two young men who didn’t deserve to die that way. This was premeditated street violence at its worst. ,” said Bristol District Attorney Thomas Quinn III. “I would also like to thank the two civilian witnesses for their courage in testifying, which was critical to a conviction.”
Surveillance video showed that Kercado met up with his victims at the Whiskey Lounge bar in New Bedford sometime before midnight on Oct. 9, 2019, according to the DA’s office. He would then ride in the backseat of a car driven by Bodden, with Tavares in the passenger seat. They traveled north on Acushnet Avenue and then west on Central Avenue before Kercado began firing from the back seat.
Bodden was shot six times, including three shots to his head. Tavares was shot five times. The car then proceeded to crash into a parked vehicle and Kercado fled the scene and then the state. He was tracked down in late December 2017 in Concord, N.C.
