Inset: Yordanis Cobos-Martinez (Dallas County Jail). Background: Motel in Dallas, Texas, where Cobos-Martinez allegedly murdered a manager (WFAA/YouTube).
Horrified onlookers watched as a Texas motel worker allegedly took a machete to a manager”s head and chopped it off following an argument about a broken washing machine.
Yordanis Cobos-Martinez, 37, stands accused of capital murder in the death of 50-year-old Chandra Nagamallaiah.
It happened around 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday at a motel in the 3400 block of Samuell Boulevard on Dallas’ east side. Cops said in a press release that the suspect cut the victim with “an edged weapon” several times. Paramedics pronounced the victim dead at the scene.
Witness Stephanie Elliott told local ABC affiliate WFAA that the victim tried to run away after the suspect attacked him but he fell.
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“He just kept hitting him and hitting until he decapitated him,” Elliott said. “I could not believe that anybody would do another human being that way.”
The news station also obtained an arrest affidavit, which stated Cobos-Martinez and another motel employee were cleaning a room when the victim came up to the suspect and told him not to use a broken washing machine. Nagamallaiah was speaking to the other employee in the room so she could translate the message to Cobos-Martinez, the affidavit said. This apparently set Cobos-Martinez off as he reportedly walked to another room and came back with a machete before attacking the victim.
Nagamallaiah’s wife and son — who were in the motel office — tried to stop the attack by hitting the suspect with a bat, but Cobos-Martinez continued to swing the machete at the victim’s neck, eventually chopping it off, cops reportedly said.
Local NBC affiliate KXAS, also citing an affidavit, reported that Cobos-Martinez kicked the decapitated head into the parking lot, picked it up, and dumped it into a dumpster.
Nagamallaiah was the manager for two or three years and was a hardworking employee, the motel property owners told KXAS.
