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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA man accused of stabbing two brothers to death last December at a Fort Wayne motel pleaded guilty Friday, telling a judge he killed the siblings because he had “a problem with them.”
Pedro Sales Lopez, 30, pleaded guilty in an Allen County court to two counts of voluntary manslaughter in the Dec. 24 deaths of Daniel Mendez-Lopez, 32, and Alfonso Mendez-Lopez, 26, WANE-TV reported.
Daniel Mendez-Lopez was pronounced dead at the scene at the Coliseum Inn, while his brother died at a local hospital. Autopsies found both died of stab wounds to the chest and their deaths were ruled homicides.
Pedro Lopez will be sentenced Sept. 4.
During a police interview after the killings, he said that he’d traveled from Kentucky to Fort Wayne to take a job at a local restaurant and was staying with the brothers. He told officers the siblings had started fighting and one of them had taken his knife, according to the affidavit.
Pedro Lopez told police he tried to break up the fight and while doing so he himself was stabbed and that’s why he had blood on his clothing, the affidavit states, although police found that he had no injuries.
But Pedro Lopez said through a court interpreter on Friday that he had killed the brothers because they attacked him.
“I had a problem with them and I had to kill them but I hope they rest in peace,” he said. “I can’t explain the problems I have but I killed them.”
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