Inset: Santos Hernandez Cornejo (Houston police). Background: Houston, Texas, restaurant where Hernandez Cornejo allegedly killed his girlfriend (KTRK).
A Texas man chased down his girlfriend in the restaurant where she worked and stabbed her repeatedly, killing her, according to cops.
Santos Hernandez Cornejo, 53, stands accused of murdering his girlfriend, 50-year-old Argelia Diaz Maya, shortly after midnight on Saturday in Houston, per a press release.
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According to a probable cause arrest affidavit from Houston police, Hernandez Cornejo “lied in wait” outside the Burnin” Shell restaurant where his girlfriend worked as a dishwasher. When she walked out, he allegedly confronted her with a knife hidden in his waistband. After they argued, she ran back inside the restaurant but Hernandez Cornejo chased after her and “stabbed her multiple times throughout her body,” cops said. Paramedics pronounced Maya dead on the scene.
The suspect fled the area but later voluntarily turned himself in to law enforcement. Post-Miranda, Hernandez Cornejo allegedly admitted to killing his girlfriend. He reportedly told detectives he suspected her of cheating on him, so he placed a tracker on her car and a listening device in her bedroom.
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Surveillance video was able to capture Hernandez Cornejo ditching the bloody knife in a nearby field, which cops later recovered.
Local ABC affiliate KTRK reports Hernandez Cornejo told a judge he is an El Salvadoran national who has lived in Houston for nearly two decades. There is an immigration hold on him. Cops told the outlet the slaying was “very aggressive” and “calculated.”
A judge initially set bond at $350,000 but later lowered it to $50,000, per jail records.
His next court date is scheduled for Aug. 19.
