Thursday, 4:30 PM
Jury convicts man of 2005 gas station slaying in Dorchester
(Wiqan Ang for The Boston Globe)
A jury today found Edwin Mejia guilty of the murder of Lourdes Hernandez at a Dorchester gas station in 2005.
By David Abel, Globe Staff
A 28-year-old Everett man today was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering a clerk at a gas station where he had worked, officials at the Suffolk district attorney's office said.
A Suffolk jury convicted Edwin Mejia of first-degree murder and armed robbery in the slaying of 39-year-old Lourdes M. Hernandez, who on the morning of June 11, 2005 worked an unscheduled shift at the LukOil Mini-Mart.
Mejia, a former employee at the Geneva Avenue store, fatally stabbed the Dorchester resident during a robbery he had planned for at least several days, prosecutors said.
Mejia's lawyer did not immediately return calls this afternoon.
Evidence introduced during more than two weeks of testimony showed that Mejia had planned to rob the store's safe, but had expected a different employee to be on duty when he arrived there with a knife between 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., prosecutors said. Medical experts at trial said Hernandez suffered numerous stab wounds in the neck, chest, and body during the attack.
Mejia was identified as a suspect when homicide detectives obtained a list of past and present LukOil employees, prosecutors said.
Eyewitness statements put him in the employees-only section of the store on the morning of the incident. Additional evidence showed that he cashed a large amount of money at an Everett supermarket and wired it out of state in the hours following Hernandez' death, prosecutors said.
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Patrick Riley sentenced Mejia to the state's mandatory term for first-degree murder: life in prison without the possibility of parole.
"Our thoughts are with the victim’s family and loved ones now," Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said in a statement. "I hope our efforts to speak for Lourdes have brought some measure of closure to their ordeal."
