Cesar Jeff Cervantes-Montoya (Minnesota Department of Corrections).
A Minnesota man was sentenced to 40 years for killing his 68-year-old landlord with a hammer after an argument.
Cesar Jeff Cervantes-Montoya, 27, learned his fate in the death of the victim identified in court documents as “BRB.” He pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree intentional murder.
The bloodshed happened on Jan. 5, 2022, in Elko New Market, 30 miles south of Minneapolis. Officers were dispatched that morning to a residence on Main Street after Cervantes-Montoya called 911, admitting to striking his neighbor with a hammer, prosecutors said in a news release.
At the home, then-Elko New Market police chief Brady Juell asked the defendant what he was doing there, according to a probable cause statement.
“Ah, I hit him and he’s, I don’t think he’s conscious,” the defendant replied before he was taken into custody.
The chief and deputies entered the residence and found a man with a bloody head, no pulse, who was cold to the touch and with extremities not bendable, lying face down at the bottom of steps leading to the basement.
A hammer was found on a coffee table.
Paramedics arrived and found that the victim had no signs of life. His body was taken to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s office.
The defendant told investigators he had lived in the basement with his girlfriend for three years.
He said his neighbor had verbally abused him regarding “landlord issues” and made racial comments, court documents said. He believed his neighbor had been beating his dog.
The defendant told investigators the series of events leading to the hammer attack began when he decided to confront his neighbor about him hitting his dog, the complaint said. Things got heated, and Cervantes-Montoya pushed his neighbor, who pushed him back.
Cervantes-Montoya then “grabbed the nearest object, which was a hammer, and I f—— hit him with it,” the complaint said. “I hit him a few times and he just wasn’t responding.”
During the altercation, the defendant said he “freaked out.”
Cervantes-Montoya allegedly hit his neighbor two or three times “in the face or the head area.”
“He was ‘panicked’ but felt ‘slightly liberated’ after BRB fell to the ground and was not responsive,” the complaint said. “He could tell he was injured because there was a lot of blood by his face and on the floor.”
“His intention was to ‘knock him out and hit him hard,”” the document added. “He didn’t think that it would necessarily kill him, but also didn’t feel bad if it did; ‘but I killed him, and I don’t care.”
Afterward, Cervantes-Montoya rinsed the hammer off in the sink.
He said what he did was “right” because “he’s been asking for it” by threatening him, hitting his dog, invading his private space, hitting his car and “getting in his bubble.”
An autopsy found the victim’s cause of death was ligature strangulation and multiple blunt force trauma to his head. The medical examiner found ligature marks and bruising on his neck, a broken hyoid bone and broken thyroid cartilage.
The victim also had multiple broken ribs and defensive wounds — a broken right pinky finger and abrasions on his right wrist and left forearm, court documents said.
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