The gunman admitted killing two restaurant workers and wounding a third in the June 2024 attack.

IRVING, Texas — A Dallas County judge sentenced Oved Bernardo Mendoza Argueta to life in prison on Feb. 12 after he pleaded guilty in the fatal shooting of two Chick-fil-A employees at the Irving restaurant where his wife worked and saw the attack unfold.

The plea closes a case that began with a daytime shooting inside a busy fast-food restaurant in Las Colinas and ended with a guilty plea instead of a trial. Prosecutors said Mendoza Argueta also received two 20-year prison terms on aggravated assault charges tied to the same attack. Two workers were killed, a third employee survived, and investigators never publicly laid out a full motive even as police said early on that the shooting appeared targeted.

Police said the shooting happened shortly before 4 p.m. on June 26, 2024, at the Chick-fil-A near North MacArthur Boulevard and Walnut Hill Lane in Irving. Authorities said Mendoza Argueta entered the restaurant, opened fire in the dining area, then went into the kitchen. By the time officers and paramedics reached the scene, two workers were dead. Investigators later identified them as 49-year-old Patricia Portillo and 31-year-old Brayan Alexis Godoy Jovel. A third employee, Hugo Lopez Flores, was wounded but survived. Police said the gunman fled in a Honda after the shooting, setting off a manhunt that lasted into the next morning. By about 3 a.m. on June 27, officers had arrested Mendoza Argueta and booked him into the Irving jail.

Investigators said one of the most important early witnesses was Mendoza Argueta’s wife, who worked at the restaurant and was there during the shooting. According to police and court records described by local news outlets, she identified her husband as the gunman. Officer Anthony Alexander of the Irving Police Department said investigators had information indicating the attack was targeted and not a random act of violence. Even so, police did not publicly explain whether the dead workers were the intended targets or what dispute may have led to the gunfire. That left major questions hanging over the case from the start. The court outcome answered who carried out the shooting and how the criminal case would end, but it did not fully answer why it happened inside a workplace in the middle of the afternoon while employees and customers were still inside.

The people killed were remembered not just as names in a court file but as family anchors whose deaths reached well beyond the restaurant. Portillo was identified by relatives and local television reports as a mother and grandmother. Godoy was described as a father of four from Guatemala who worked multiple jobs to support family members. His wife, Elisabeth de Godoy, said the family depended on him fully and spoke of the loss left behind. In the days after the shooting, flowers and photos gathered outside the restaurant as relatives, co-workers and neighbors stopped to mourn. One window at the site remained boarded up as the business stayed closed for cleanup and recovery. Chick-fil-A said in a statement after the shooting that the company would miss its two team members dearly and that its focus was on caring for the staff and the victims’ families.

The case also moved through several legal stages before reaching sentencing. Mendoza Argueta was first jailed on a capital murder charge after the June 2024 shooting. Local reporting at the time said he was also placed on an immigration hold. By February 2026, the case ended with a guilty plea to one count of murder and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon rather than a full trial on the original capital murder accusation. Dallas County Criminal District Attorney John Creuzot announced the sentence, and the district attorney’s office said the result ensured accountability even though it could not restore what the families lost. Court officials did not need to set a future trial date once the plea was entered, and the sentencing marked the clearest procedural milestone in the case since the arrest.

Outside the legal record, the shooting left lasting trauma for workers and relatives who were in or near the restaurant that day. A mother whose son was working in the kitchen told CBS Texas that her son escaped by jumping out of a window after the gunfire began. She said he kept telling her he was OK, but she did not know what he was carrying emotionally after living through the attack. Nearby residents who spoke after the arrest described shock that a workplace lunch hour could turn into a homicide scene so quickly. The combination of a public setting, co-workers as victims and a spouse as a witness made the case especially jarring in North Texas. The sentence brings formal punishment, but the public record shows the human toll remained central from the first memorials through the final court hearing.

With the guilty plea entered and the prison terms imposed, the criminal case against Mendoza Argueta has reached its main endpoint. As of the sentencing announcement on Feb. 12, he is set to serve a life term on the murder count and two 20-year terms on the aggravated assault counts, closing one of Irving’s most unsettling workplace killings in recent years.