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A jury on Thursday found a 24-year-old man guilty of the 2019 murder of a Weslaco doctor.
Luis Antonio Lopez Valenzuela has been on trial since Monday and the jury convicted him Thursday on charges of murder and aggravated robbery for the shooting and killing of Dr. John Dominguez on Nov. 7, 2019, court records show.
The investigation began after Weslaco police responded to a two-vehicle crash on Business 83 where the doctor was found dead.
At first, police believed he died as a result of the crash, but witnesses told officers that a shooting involving two vehicles happened before the crash, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Investigators obtained surveillance footage that revealed Dominguez was leaving his office when another vehicle attempted to block him in when a man approached and began shooting at him.
Police wouldn’t make arrests for two months. It wasn’t until Runnels County sheriff’s deputies opened an investigation into an unrelated robbery and arrested the driver of a dark blue Sonata, later identified as 21-year-old Jose Ismael Gonzalez’s brother.
That turned out to be the vehicle linked to the murder that was seen in surveillance video released by the Weslaco Police Department following the shooting.
Gonzalez pleaded guilty to murder in May and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
After the arrests, Weslaco police said that 26-year-old Josue Benavides Torres was the mastermind behind the attempted robbery. He has pleaded not guilty to murder and aggravated robbery.
Police said at the time that Benavides received information from a “curandero” that it was time to rob the doctor, who the men believed would have $25,000 in a briefcase.
“Benavides states that he was approached to secure this money by some force using threats of exposure to prior bad acts he committed with the person that contracted him, identified by Benavides as [redacted],” a probable cause stated. “Benavides states he recruits both Joel Gonzalez and the Driver, who he identifies as Luis, to be the ones to make contact with the Doctor and extort the money from him by force.”
Gonzalez was identified as the shooter.
Lopez was remanded to the Hidalgo County Adult Detention Center after the verdict to wait until sentencing.
