CT man acquitted in fatal 2019 shooting after victim’s family offered $500K reward for conviction

A man has been acquitted on all charges in connection with the slaying of an Avon man in Hartford in 2019.

Geno McMahon, 37, was found not guilty by a jury in Hartford Superior Court on Monday on charges of murder, first-degree assault and criminal possession of a firearm in connection with the fatal shooting of 24-year-old Eros Diaz. A second man survived the attack and spent months in the hospital.

McMahon was charged last June in connection with the murder of Diaz after Diaz’s family put up a whopping $500,000 reward for information that led to the killer’s arrest and conviction.

McMahon’s attorney, Hartford-based Gerald Klein, told the Hartford Courant he focused during his defense in the trial on the unusually high reward and that the state’s star witness to the killing only came forward after the money was made public .

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After picking a jury for a week, Klein said prosecutors put forth evidence against his client for four days before a jury acquitted him.

According to the arrest warrant affidavit, Diaz and Xavier Lugo, who was 31 years old at the time, were shot on June 22, 2019, shortly before 9:40 p.m. in the area of 25 Winship St. after they were involved in a car crash. McMahon lived nearby at the time.

Diaz was shot in the head and pronounced dead at the scene, while Lugo was found about a block away suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, the warrant affidavit said. He was initially listed in critical condition and spent about three months recovering in the hospital.

Lugo was not cooperative with authorities during the investigation, Hartford police wrote in the warrant affidavit.

Investigators were able to view video surveillance in the area of the shooting that showed Diaz and Lugo were involved in a crash before they pulled over and got out of the vehicle. Diaz, who was a passenger in the vehicle, got into the driver seat shortly after a conversation with Lugo, who remained outside of the car, the warrant said. The video surveillance showed that someone approached the vehicle and shot the man before fleeing the area, the warrant affidavit said.

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A witness told police they saw a man wearing a hat walking north on Winship Street before gunfire rang out. After the shots were fired, the same witness reported seeing the man running south with a shirt wrapped around his hand. He no longer had the hat on, the witness told police.

Authorities recovered a black “NASA” hat in the area of the shooting and sent it to the Connecticut Forensic Science Laboratory to compare DNA extracted from it to that of McMahon. According to the warrant affidavit, the first test concluded the samples from the hat “were too complicated of a mixture” to find a “direct comparison” to McMahon, while a second lab eliminated McMahon as a contributor.

A second witness who spoke to police told investigators McMahon allegedly had messaged her the night of the shooting and admitted that he was involved in an altercation with two men who went by the street names “Tooth” and “X” and that he “had to do it” because “X” had previously shot the man’s brother, the warrant affidavit said. When asked which gun he used, the witness told detectives, McMahon said his “baby,” a term the witness said he usually used to describe a .380 pistol he frequently carried, the warrant affidavit said.

The same witness also told police McMahon was afraid he had left something at the scene that could tie him to the shooting and that he was known to wear a NASA hat, according to the warrant affidavit.

During the four days that evidence was presented at trial, Klein said he focused on the reward money Diaz’s family put up , which he said a detective admitted during testimony was the highest he had ever seen put up by a victim’s family. To put it in perspective for the jury, Klein said he pointed to the $1 million reward offered by the FBI while authorities investigated the “Unabomber” for nearly two decades.

According to Klein, the key witness for the prosecution was a neighbor who lived near the shooting who came forward after the reward money was offered.

“Four years after the crime all of a sudden it dawns on (him) that he witnessed the whole thing,” Klein said.

Klein also said he was able to establish that his client worked at a local Irish bar and that he may have been working the night of the killing.

He said he also told the jury that prosecutors failed to ever find a reason why McMahon would want Diaz killed.

“They never established a motive for this,” Klein said.

“This is a case that could have gone either way,” he added. “I’m kind of relieved.”

Hartford-based lawyer John Kennelly, the attorney who represented Diaz’s family, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.