The plea ends a Dallas County prosecution that began after a June 2024 shooting inside a Las Colinas restaurant.
IRVING, Texas — A Dallas County judge sentenced Oved Bernardo Mendoza Argueta to life in prison after prosecutors said he shot and killed two Chick-fil-A employees in June 2024 at the Irving restaurant where his wife worked, then fled before officers arrested him the next morning.
The case drew wide attention in North Texas because the gunfire erupted in broad daylight inside a busy fast-food restaurant in Las Colinas, leaving two workers dead, another wounded and co-workers and customers scrambling for safety. The prosecution ended without a trial when Mendoza Argueta pleaded guilty to one count of murder and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The punishment fixed the criminal case, but it left open the same question that followed the shooting from the first day: investigators still have not publicly explained a motive.
Police said the shooting happened about 3:50 p.m. on June 26, 2024, at the Chick-fil-A in the 5300 block of N. MacArthur Blvd., near Walnut Hill Lane in Irving’s Las Colinas area. Officers responding to multiple 911 calls found two victims with gunshot wounds inside the restaurant. Paramedics pronounced them dead at the scene. Investigators later said Mendoza Argueta entered the restaurant and opened fire in the seating area before moving toward the kitchen. His wife, who worked at that location and was on duty that day, witnessed the attack and identified him to police, according to arrest records cited in local reporting. Officer Anthony Alexander of the Irving Police Department said in the early hours of the case that detectives believed it was “a targeted incident and not a random act of violence,” a description that helped shape the investigation from the start.
The two workers killed were identified as 49-year-old Ana Patricia Chileno Portillo and 31-year-old Brayan Alexis Godoy Jovel. A third employee, Hugo Lopez Flores, survived after being wounded. Police said the suspect fled in a silver Honda sedan, and authorities began searching for him the same evening. By about 3 a.m. on June 27, 2024, Mendoza Argueta had been booked into the Irving jail on a capital murder charge. Booking records later showed an immigration hold. In the months that followed, the case moved from an emergency manhunt to a standard felony prosecution in Dallas County. By February 2026, prosecutors said the now-38-year-old defendant pleaded guilty in the 203rd District Court. Judge Rocky Jones imposed a life sentence on the murder count and 20 years on each aggravated assault count, with the terms ordered to run consecutively. As part of the plea agreement, Mendoza Argueta also waived his right to appeal.
The facts that became public in the first two days after the shooting showed how quickly the violence shattered a workplace routine. Police said the attack happened in the middle of the afternoon, while employees were serving customers and working in the kitchen. NBC 5 reported that dozens of police units converged on the restaurant and that workers could be seen gathered outside as investigators secured the scene. A CBS Texas report later added that one mother said her son survived by jumping from a window in the kitchen area. She said he kept telling her he was OK, though she feared the trauma would last. Chick-fil-A said after the shooting that its focus was on caring for employees and the victims’ families. The company’s local owner-operator said the team would deeply miss the two workers who were killed. Even with the guilty plea now on record, major parts of the story remain unsettled in public. Police have not publicly detailed whether Mendoza Argueta knew Portillo or Godoy Jovel, whether either worker was an intended target, or what led him to bring a gun into the restaurant that afternoon.
Those unanswered questions mattered to relatives and co-workers because the victims were remembered not only as names in a case file but as people with families, jobs and routines that ended without warning. Local television reports in the days after the shooting described Portillo as a grandmother and Godoy Jovel as a father of four who had recently moved to North Texas from Guatemala and was working multiple jobs to support relatives. Friends gathered at a growing memorial outside the restaurant, leaving flowers and praying together near the entrance. One friend of Godoy Jovel told FOX 4 that he had been kind and gentle and had played with her baby that same morning. The setting added to the shock. The restaurant sat in a busy commercial corridor, not a place where workers expected gunfire in the middle of the day. Irving police said early in the case that there was no ongoing threat to the public, but the visible police response and the images of a taped-off fast-food restaurant turned the shooting into one of the city’s most jarring crime scenes of that summer.
The legal path also changed sharply over time. When Mendoza Argueta was first arrested, police said he faced capital murder charges because two people had been killed in the same criminal episode. By the time the case concluded in February 2026, prosecutors announced a plea to one count of murder and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon instead. The public record available in news accounts does not fully explain the negotiations behind that change, but the result was a conviction without a jury trial and a sentence that ensures he will spend the rest of his life in prison before the consecutive assault terms are counted. Dallas County Criminal District Attorney John Creuzot’s office said the plea ensured accountability and serious consequences, while also sparing families the uncertainty of a trial. During sentencing, prosecutors said, one of the victims’ daughters gave a victim impact statement. That hearing marked the first formal end point in a case that had remained open for more than 19 months, from the June 2024 shooting through the February 2026 plea and punishment.
Outside court, the case left a quieter record of fear and grief. The restaurant remained closed after the shooting, and clean-up crews were seen at the site while neighbors and workers tried to make sense of what had happened. Mohammed Raga, a nearby resident, told FOX 4 in the days after the killings that what happened was “very, very sad” and that every life was important. Another parent who brought flowers to the memorial told CBS Texas that she was grateful her son survived, but heartbroken for the families whose loved ones did not. Her comments captured the split that often follows workplace violence: relief for those who made it out, and a lasting sense that ordinary work had turned deadly in a matter of seconds. The plea agreement has now closed the courtroom phase of the case, but not the human one. Families still carry the deaths of Portillo and Godoy Jovel, the surviving worker still carries the injury and trauma, and the public still does not know why the shooting happened.
The case now stands as closed in criminal court after the February 2026 sentencing, with no trial scheduled and no appeal expected under the plea agreement. The next likely milestone, if any, would come only if additional records or statements explain the motive or if other civil proceedings emerge from the shooting.