A man who gained notoriety as a 3-foot-11 fugitive from a murder charge has pleaded guilty to gunning down a man in Silver Spring. Henry Chavez, 29, admitted Tuesday that he shot Hamington Luis Ravanales Orozco three times in the head last May.
Chavez pleaded guilty in Montgomery County Circuit Court to first-degree murder and now faces decades in prison.
Authorities said Chavez attacked Orozco outside a home on the 10100 block of Georgia Avenue on the evening of May 27, 2010.
Orozco and three others were sitting on a front stoop when Chavez approached them about 8:30 p.m. After a verbal disagreement, Chavez shot Orozco three times, according to his plea agreement.
Orozco was taken to Suburban Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Chavez fled and became the subject of a police investigation that lasted for several months.
Witnesses described the shooter as a 4-foot-tall man, and that description helped police develop Chavez, who had lived in the Mount Pleasant area of the District, as a suspect, according to prosecutors.
A witness was shown Chavez’s picture in a photo lineup and identified him as the killer.
Police charged Chavez a few days after the slaying, setting off a months-long hunt. The U.S. Marshals Service joined the search, and Chavez was featured as a “Most Wanted” fugitive in The Washington Examiner last June.
The Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force described him at the time as “a little man with a big gun.”
But Chavez wasn’t apprehended until February, when he was caught in El Salvador.
Chavez, wearing a green dress shirt and tie, did not speak during the plea hearing, except to give one-word responses to questions from Judge Eric Johnson and defense attorney Louis Martucci. Chavez affirmed that his guilty plea was voluntary and that he understood the trial rights he was giving up by entering a plea.
No motive in the killing was mentioned during the hearing.
“I don’t know if there was a motive in this case,” Martucci said afterward. He didn’t comment further on the case.
Chavez had previously run afoul of the law. He was charged with drug possession and distribution in November 2007 and pleaded guilty in February 2008. In that case, he was sentenced to nine months and served much of that sentence at a halfway house, court records show.
Chavez is scheduled to be sentenced in the murder case on July 18.
The plea deal in the case calls for him to receive a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. Prosecutors intend to request that Chavez serve 30 years of a life sentence.
He is being held without bond until he is sentenced.
