Fayetteville City Councilman Mario Benavente waited nearly five months to hear back from city staff about questions he had about the April murder-suicide involving a Fayetteville city police officer, before ultimately forcing a discussion by requesting it be on Monday’s City Council agenda.
On April 28, Officer Domingo Tavarez-Rodriguez — who had been with the department since June 2021 — and his wife, Yenitza Arroyo-Torres, were discovered dead in their home in the East Fayetteville River Glen neighborhood. A preliminary investigation by the State Bureau of Investigation confirmed the crime as murder-suicide. The SBI says Tavarez-Rodriguez shot his wife multiple times before turning the gun on himself.
“When he failed to report and the supervisors were unable to contact him by phone, that’s what prompted them to go by and check on him at his residence,” Braden said at a news conference following the deaths.
Reporting after the incident uncovered that it may not have been entirely unforeseen: A 911 call Tavarez-Rodriguez made two days earlier suggested a dispute of some kind between Tavarez-Rodriguez and his wife. On April 26, Tavarez-Rodriguez called 911 to say that his wife “had too much to drink” at dinner.
“I wouldn’t call it a disturbance,” Tavarez-Rodriguez told the dispatch operator, according to the recording released by the Fayetteville Police Department to local media. “I’m just trying to cover myself.”
At one point, Tavarez-Rodriguez asked if Arroyo-Torres wanted to speak. She replied in Spanish, which was translated by CBS 17: “You didn’t tell her you hit me in the ear because you were drunk?”
The call ended with the dispatcher advising them to avoid further contact and telling them an officer was on the way.
“And that’s where things start to go awry for me,” Benavente told CityView on Wednesday, “and for a lot of members of my community who asked me about it.”
He has questioned whether an officer was indeed sent to check on Tavarez-Rodriguez and Arroyo-Torres after the call; a CityView search of the department’s public database did not find any police reports documenting the incident.
Loren Bymer, director of the city’s marketing and communications department, told CityView in an email Wednesday that he needed to research if there was information pertaining to a police report of the April 26 interaction.
Benavente said he’s received different explanations from city staff and police as to why a report doesn’t exist, but nothing formal or official.
“I’ve got at least three or four different explanations for why there isn’t a report,” he said. “And then when you say there’s no report, then how do you know any of that?”
Concerns about incident
Before making his request public at Monday’s council meeting, Benavente told CityView he had sent three email messages to senior staff asking for an update on the case and response to “highly concerning news” about the incident. In his first email inquiry on May 16 — sent to City Manager Douglas Hewett, Police Chief Kemberle Braden, Assistant City Manager Jeffrey Yates and former City Attorney Karen McDonald — he questioned the police’s apparent lack of response to the April 26 domestic violence call.
“When Officer Tavarez-Rodriguez is quoted saying he was ‘just trying to cover myself’ and that there was no disturbance, it seems he succeeded in quelling the dispatcher,” Benavente wrote.
“Was protocol followed; are there Spanish fluent folks at dispatch; at what point did that dispatcher know of the officer’s occupation is of concern; and was chain of command alerted?” he continued.
Local media reported that the Police Department and SBI had procured two warrants to search the home on April 28. That search turned up at least 16 firearms in the home.
WRAL later reported a call made on April 28 by a Fayetteville 911 operator requesting security assistance for an emergency ping on Tavarez-Rodriguez’s phone from Verizon when he was unresponsive to supervisors’ attempts to reach him.
According to WRAL’s report of the call, the operator told Verizon the ping was for “a subject who may be attempting to harm himself or his wife.”
“Warrant details to Verizon suggest FPD already had a high degree of suspicion that self harm/harm to spouse was at play before arriving to the scene,” Benavente wrote in his May email.
In his initial email inquiry, Benavente also referenced the dispatch recording on April 28, when officers did a wellness check after Tavarez-Rodriguez didn’t report for work.
“I didn’t want to call it over the radio because it’s one of our officers,” the Fayetteville 911 dispatcher said, according to WRAL.
Benavente criticized this statement as an example of a police culture that he believes may minimize domestic violence calls involving officers.
“Oftentimes domestic violence is something that is more prevalent — the same way people make jokes about dentists harming themselves and people at the post office going postal — it’s just sort of a stereotype about law enforcement and some of the domestic violence stuff,” Benavente told CityView. “And then, of course, the blue wall of silence that may have really cost someone’s life in this situation and the action that I would have asked to have been taken Monday.”
In May, Benavente had requested a formal assurance that following any investigation, city or police management “acknowledge any failures to city council, and explain how they will be better managed in the future.” Hewett reported to the council Monday that the city’s internal investigation had been completed but did not expand further on Benavente’s request.
Council request
Benavente said he tried to get official answers for months, sending follow up emails in August and September before ultimately submitting an agenda item request. In his request to put the item on the work session agenda for Monday, Benavente responded to the standard question on council request forms: “What do you envision accomplishing with this agenda request?”
“Transparency,” he wrote. “After 132 days, I have not received any update to information I requested about Officer involved shooting. I detail the concern circumstances of the shooting in my first email about the situation 05/16/23. Two subsequent requests for follow up 08/28 and 9/14, have still not yielded any responses from city staff.”
Benavente said on Wednesday his motivation in continuing to pursue the topic is about transparency and improving protocol.
“I’d hate for it just to get swept under the rug or for us to just think that this was just an anomaly or a one-off,” he told CityView. “There needs to be something done in response to this, protocol-wise, procedure-wise, best-practices-wise, and I haven’t seen that since May.”
At the start of the city council’s Monday meeting, Benavente first offered Hewett, the city manager, the opportunity to provide him with the information he had requested. This exchange was prompted by Councilman D.J. Haire’s questioning of whether the item was appropriate for a work session at the start of the meeting.
Responding to Benavente, Hewett said the “unfortunate situation” is protected since the SBI’s investigation is ongoing.
“It is covered on two principles,” Hewett said of the incident. “One is personnel, which we are not permitted to share. And the other is the investigation is being done by the SBI. That information has been provided and it has not changed. There (is), as you can imagine, a lot of interest in a situation like this. And some of it also delves into speculation and questions about transparency. But what we can share, we have.”
Hewett also reiterated the SBI investigation is ongoing, and he hopes the results will be shared soon. He added the city’s internal investigation had been completed, “and we’re not able to share much beyond what we have already provided.”
When the discussion item prompted by Benavente ultimately came up again at the end of the work session, he said he would pass on it.
“I think the city manager opened with it and gave us an update,” he said. “I got some additional details as well. So [it’s] something that I’ll move for now and bring back at a future occasion.”
In response this week to CityView’s inquiry as to why city staff had not shared information with Benavente regarding the Tavarez-Rodriguez incident following his inquiries, Bymer said that prior conversations resulted in the request.
“Council member Benavente had multiple conversations with senior city staff concerning this case which resulted in the council member submitting an official council request for the work session on Oct. 2,” Bymer said. “All available information has been released to the council and the public.”
The city is still waiting on the results of the SBI investigation.
Evey Weisblat can be reached at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com.
