A man is dead after an apparent stabbing and beheading at a Dallas motel on Wednesday morning.
Investigators said the suspect, later identified as 37-year-old Yordanis Cobos-Martinez, put the victim’s head in the trash. He was seen in a blood-soaked T-shirt as Dallas police took him into custody.
Members of the Dallas Police patrol unit tracked down Cobos-Martinez moments after he took off from the murder scene at the Downtown Suites.
“I’m really shocked,” Nancy Pineda said.
Pineda works next door to the motel. She said police swarmed Samuell Boulevard shortly after 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.
“There was a lady who came in here and told me there was a guy running or something,” Pineda said.
A witness who did not want to be identified told NBC 5 the victim first yelled for help, then ran toward his wife and son, who were in the motel office.
That witness said the victim’s son tried hitting the man with a bat, but he continued stabbing the worker with the machete, then decapitated him.
According to an arrest affidavit released Wednesday evening, the man was cleaning a room with a co-worker when the victim approached and informed him not to use a broken washing machine. The co-worker told police the man became upset that the victim was speaking to her to translate instead of talking directly to him.
“Video shows the suspect then exited the motel room and produced a machete from his person and started cutting and stabbing the complainant multiple times,” the affidavit states.
Witnesses said the victim, later identified by police as Chandra Nagamallaiah, began running toward the office. Despite efforts by his wife and son to stop the attack, witnesses said the man continued striking Nagamallaiah.
The man then kicked Nagamallaiah’s decapitated head into the parking lot, then picked it up and put it in a dumpster, the affidavit said.
Police said Cobos-Martinez was still armed with the machete, along with Nagamallaiah’s key card and cell phone, when he was arrested. During questioning, police said he admitted to the killing.
Public records link Cobos-Martinez to crimes in Houston, California and Florida. He’s charged with capital murder and has been placed on an ICE hold at the Dallas County Jail. Records show he is a Cuban national.
Detectives spent hours combing through the scene, later serving a search warrant at the motel for more clues behind the beheading.
The motel property owners tell NBC 5 that Nagamallaiah had managed the motel for two or three years and described him as a good, hardworking person.