Jairon A. Gonzales-Martinez
A 23-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly killing a man three blocks from his Brentwood home early Sunday morning, Suffolk County police said.
Jairon A. Gonzales-Martinez was charged with second-degree murder.
Homicide Squad detectives said the suspect beat Rumaldo Bethancourt-Lopez on the head with an undisclosed blunt object outside of Fiesta Pool Hall on Suffolk Avenue at 1:49 a.m., police said. The 29-year-old victim was pronounced dead at the scene.
“We haven’t had any problems at that place in the past,” said Detective Lt. Gerard Pelkofsky. “This was just a tragedy of some sort.”
A second man, Ramiro Garcia, of Central Islip, was taken to Southside Hospital in Bay Shore in critical condition.
Pelfofsky said additional charges are pending in an eventual grand jury indictment. He added that it was unclear if the victim and the suspect, who lived blocks apart in Brentwood, knew each other.
Gonzales-Martinez will be arraigned Monday at First District Court in Central Islip.
The case is the fifth murder investigation in Brentwood in a six-week span and the second over the weekend.
An 18-year-old man was fatally shot on Grand Boulevard on April 22, a 34-year-old man was found dead of a trauma wound to the head on Nimitz Avenue on May 12 and another 18-year-old man was shot and killed in the backyard of his Lukens Avenue home May 24.
On Friday, a man was arrested for allegedly smothering his 98-year-old mother to death, then attempting suicide in their Wilson Street home.
