The case closed without a trial after a 2024 restaurant shooting left two workers dead and another injured.
IRVING, Texas — A man who killed two Chick-fil-A employees at the Irving restaurant where his wife worked has been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty in the June 2024 shooting, ending a case that drew attention across North Texas because of its speed, violence and still-unclear motive.
The sentence marks the formal close of the criminal case against Oved Bernardo Mendoza Argueta, who admitted guilt in the attack inside the Chick-fil-A on North MacArthur Boulevard. Prosecutors said two workers were killed and another was wounded when gunfire broke out during the afternoon rush. The plea spared relatives of the victims from a trial, but it did not answer the question that has hung over the case from the start: why the shooting happened inside a workplace where the gunman’s wife and the victims were all connected.
The violence began at about 3:50 p.m. on June 26, 2024, when police said Mendoza Argueta entered the Chick-fil-A in the Las Colinas area of Irving and opened fire. Investigators said shots were fired in the dining room and then in the kitchen area, where employees were working. Officers rushed to the restaurant after multiple 911 calls and found two people dead inside. Paramedics pronounced them dead at the scene. A third worker, Hugo Lopez Flores, survived after being wounded. By early evening, police were publicly searching for Mendoza Argueta and said he had fled in a silver Honda sedan. Irving police later arrested him during the early morning hours of June 27. His wife, who worked at the restaurant and was there during the shooting, identified him as the gunman, according to the arrest affidavit described in later court and news reports.
The two people killed were identified as Ana Patricia Chileno Portillo, 49, and Brayan Alexis Godoy Jovel, 31, both employees of the restaurant. In the days after the shooting, family members and co-workers described Portillo as a mother and grandmother, and Godoy as a father of four from Guatemala who had come to North Texas to work and support relatives back home. His wife, Elisabeth de Godoy, said in a statement that her family depended on him and that the loss would reach far beyond the restaurant walls. Police said early in the investigation that they believed the shooting was targeted and not a random act of violence, but officials never publicly laid out whom the gunman intended to target or what conflict led to the attack. That left one of the central facts of the case unchanged from the first day: authorities were certain about who carried out the shooting, but not willing, or not yet able, to explain the reason.
The setting deepened the shock. The restaurant sits along North MacArthur Boulevard in the busy Las Colinas area, a commercial corridor surrounded by offices, apartments and daily traffic. A fast-food counter and kitchen are ordinary workspaces, but in this case they became a crime scene in the middle of the afternoon. In the hours and days after the shooting, memorial flowers and photos appeared outside the closed restaurant. One nearby resident, Mohammed Raga, told local television crews the killings were “very, very sad,” summing up the sense of disbelief around a place built around routine family meals and shift work. Another mother, whose son survived after escaping from the kitchen, described the emotional shock that followed the gunfire even after the physical danger had passed. The local owner-operator of the Chick-fil-A said the company’s focus was on caring for team members and the victims’ families. The location closed after the shooting, and reports months later said it had remained shut.
The legal path changed significantly between the arrest and the final sentence. After his June 2024 arrest, Mendoza Argueta was initially reported to be facing a capital murder charge in the deaths of two people. By the time the case reached its conclusion in Dallas County, prosecutors announced that he had pleaded guilty to one count of murder and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He received a life sentence on the murder count and two 20-year prison terms on the aggravated assault counts. The Dallas County district attorney’s office said the resolution ensured accountability even though it could not restore what the families lost. Reports on the plea agreement said Mendoza Argueta also waived his right to appeal. That waiver, along with the guilty plea, removed the need for a jury trial and sharply narrowed the remaining public steps in the case. As of March 16, 2026, no further public hearing in the criminal matter had been widely announced.
Even with the conviction complete, important pieces of the story remain unresolved in public. Police have said Mendoza Argueta’s wife worked at the restaurant and witnessed the shooting. They also said they believed the attack was targeted. But investigators did not publicly explain whether the wife, the two people who were killed, or someone else inside the restaurant was the intended focus. They did not publicly describe any earlier dispute among the people involved. That silence left relatives and co-workers to carry both grief and uncertainty. One of Portillo’s daughters gave a victim impact statement during sentencing, a reminder that the courtroom ending was also a family reckoning. The surviving worker’s family spoke not only about fear but also about the strange burden of survival, trying to resume ordinary life after seeing co-workers killed on the job. For the immigrant families tied to the case, the losses were especially stark: a wage earner gone, children left behind, and a public record that still does not fully explain why.
The case also drew notice because of questions around Mendoza Argueta’s immigration status. News reports citing law enforcement sources said he was a citizen of El Salvador and that an immigration hold was placed on him after his arrest. That detail became part of the public narrative almost immediately, but it did not change the local criminal case, which moved through Dallas County court. Prosecutors focused on the killings, the injured survivor and the plea that avoided trial. In practical terms, the sentence means Mendoza Argueta will spend the rest of his life in prison on the murder conviction, while the two aggravated assault sentences add further punishment tied to the same burst of gunfire. The result gives finality to the prosecution, though not closure in the broader sense used by grieving families. There will be no full trial record with days of witness testimony to fill in the remaining gaps, no public cross-examination to test motive, and no opening statement that ties every fact together in one official narrative.
The human record left behind is therefore carried mostly in fragments: the police timeline, the plea papers, the names of the dead, and the voices of relatives trying to explain who was lost. Godoy’s family described a man who left home to provide for his wife and four children. Portillo’s relatives spoke of grandchildren who would grow up without her. The surviving worker’s mother described the fear of hearing that her son had escaped but not knowing how deeply the shooting would stay with him. Those pieces, more than any legal language, explain why the case continued to resonate long after the first sirens faded from North MacArthur Boulevard. It was not only a double killing. It was an attack inside a workplace, in front of co-workers, customers and the gunman’s own wife, with ordinary afternoon labor turning in seconds into a scene of bloodshed and panic.
The case now stands in its final reported posture: the defendant has pleaded guilty, the sentence has been imposed, and the victims’ families have delivered at least part of their grief in open court. What comes next is not another trial date but the longer, quieter aftermath of burial, memory and recovery. Unless new records or officials provide more detail, the motive behind the attack may remain one of the few major unanswered questions in a case that is otherwise legally complete.