A Colorado man will spend the next 32 years behind bars for the 2018 deaths of his children.
On Friday, a Pueblo County judge sentenced 37-year-old Jesus Dominguez to 32 years in state prison for the deaths of Jesus Dominguez Jr., 5, and Yesenia Dominguez, 3.
The sentence comes after he took a plea deal and agreed to testify against his girlfriend, Corena Minjarez, 37. 9News reports.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, officers with the Pueblo Police Department arrived on January 20, 2024, at the Kings Storage off Sixth Street after a caller found a metal container filled with hardened concrete.
The owner of the storage unit told 9News that the people leasing the unit had not made payments for several months, adding that they had until January 10, 2024, to empty the unit of their belongings.
Police then launched an investigation into the incident and determined that Yesenia’s remains had been hidden in the concrete and that her father, Dominguez and his girlfriend, Minjarez, had been living in the storage unit.
In the course of the investigation, police found Minjarez’s abandoned vehicle in a scrapyard. They executed a search warrant and found a suitcase containing the remains of Jesus Dominguez Jr.
Prosecutors said Minjarez, who has since been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murder, killed Yesenia and put her body inside a tote bag and then a suitcase, before moving her to the storage unit, with Dominguez’s help.
Dominguez testified during Minjarez’s murder trial that Minjarez had been struggling to potty-train the children, leading to mistreatment and physical abuse.
Minjarez reportedly claimed that Dominguez acted alone, but the prosecution said that the evidence proved otherwise, and that she had grown increasingly jealous of the children’s mother while accusing him of cheating with her.
“Despite the defense’s claims that the co-defendant acted alone, the evidence clearly demonstrated that Minjarez was responsible for the death of these two children and responsible for hiding the bodies under horrific conditions,” the DA’s office said.
During testimony, Dominguez said that Minjarez would drive to obtain drugs while forcing the children to sit in plastic bags.
During one incident, when Jesus Jr. soiled himself, she sprayed him with a high-pressure hose at a car wash, causing lacerations to his groin.
Dominguez said that on March 14, 2018, while taking the children to school, Yesenia soiled herself and was placed in a trash bag and forced to sit inside it on the car floor. She stopped breathing.
Although the couple thought about taking her to a hospital, they decided against it because she showed signs of abuse.
Weeks later, while living in their car, the couple began “snorting Percocet and methamphetamine,” Law&Crime reports. Jesus Jr. was in the car with the couple, while Yesenia’s body had been placed inside the trunk, in a suitcase.
In April 2018, while doing drugs, the couple noticed that the boy, seated in the vehicle’s back seat between plastic trash bags and blankets, had stopped breathing.
They decided against taking him to the hospital and instead, stuffed him inside a suitcase, and put him in the trunk.
The couple took Yesenia’s body to the storage unit. When they were evicted from the unit for non-payment, Minjarez’s mother noticed the trash can filled with concrete while helping them move out, and contacted police.
A few weeks later, police found Jesus Jr’s body.
Both children’s manner of death was listed “homicidal violence,” but no cause of death was listed, due to decomposition.
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[Feature Photo: Jesus Dominguez Jr. and Yesenia Dominguez/Handout]
