Returned from Calif.: Belnavis, charged with murdering mother and daughter, in Worcester court
WORCESTER — Dejan D. Belnavis, the second of two men accused in the March 5 killing of Chasity Nuñez and her 11-year-old daughter Zella on Englewood Avenue, appeared Friday in Central District Court in Worcester, where he was arraigned on two counts of murder.
In a courtroom watched over by gang unit police officers, Belnavis, 27, pleaded not guilty after smirking in the direction of a full gallery that reeled with tension from the moment his name was called by court officers.
Wearing a sweatshirt printed with the name of Bish's RV, a chain of RV dealerships, Belnavis was at court on Friday only hours after being brought by authorities to Massachusetts earlier in the morning, two weeks after his arrest in California.
Karel Mangual, 28, also faces two murder charges for the killings. He was arrested the day after the shooting.
Belnavis was caught in San Diego on March 11. He had been on the run since the killing in Worcester of Chasity Nuñez, 27, and Zella on Englewood Avenue the afternoon of March 5, when two gunmen fired into a vehicle.
Using surveillance video and witness evidence, police said that Belnavis and Mangual ran after the shootings in the direction of a parked white sedan that was “consistent” with a vehicle circling the area before the shooting and leaving the area afterward.
Police were able to get the sedan's license plate and speak to its owner, who told them Belnavis had been borrowing it for about a year. Belnavis was listed as the driver of the car during a Shrewsbury crash in January, they said, and his cellphone records tied him to Englewood Avenue at the time of the shooting.
Police allege in court documents that video shows Belnavis and Mangual exiting the vehicle in Hartford, Connecticut, with both men wearing shoes similar to the ones worn by the shooters.
Mangual was arrested March 6. Shortly after, the state police and U.S. Marshals Service began a manhunt for Belnavis, with a reward offered of up to $10,000 for information on his whereabouts.
He was arrested March 11 in the San Diego area and later waived extradition. He was brought to Massachusetts on Friday morning, according to the Worcester District Attorney's Office.
Belnavis is being held without bail. He will appear in court again May 2 for a probable cause hearing.
Belnavis has 20 prior criminal cases in the city, mostly for drugs and domestic violence.
He was most recently sentenced to six months in jail in 2022 after a jury found him guilty of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
Mangual is expected to appear at a dangerousness hearing on April 12, faces two counts of murder — an upgrade from one count of armed assault with intent to murder and carrying a firearm without a license.
He has a tattoo that reads “RIP Robert Walker,” according to court records, a dedication to an 18-year-old Blackstone man who died in 2013 after an altercation at a birthday party in Worcester.
Collage Nuñez, the brother of Chasity Nuñez, the woman killed March 5, was sentenced to seven to 10 years in prison in 2016 after pleading guilty to manslaughter in Walker’s death.
Mangual also faces trial at Dudley District Court on allegations from Webster police that include assault and battery on a police officer and carrying a dangerous weapon stemming from March 2023.
He has an open case in Central District Court on allegations that Worcester police caught him in March 2022 with 8 grams of suspected crack, which they believe he was selling on Main Street.
In 2015, Mangual was sentenced to three to five years in prison for a retaliatory shooting behind an apartment building on View Street. Authorities connected the attack to the fatal shooting of Christian Obeng-Addo days earlier.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Dejan Belnavis pleads not guilty in murder of Chasity, Zella Nuñez
