Hillsborough prosecutors seek death penalty in robbery, stabbing case

TAMPA — The office of Hillsborough State Attorney Suzy Lopez will seek the death penalty for a man accused of stabbing to death another man and stealing his jewelry.

A written notice filed in court Friday declared that prosecutors will ask for capital punishment in the case of Dayhan Ruenes Vinet. He is charged with first-degree murder, robbery and other crimes related to the June slaying of Yalexander Jimenez Felipe.

The declaration makes Ruenes Vinet, 32, at least the 13th defendant against whom Hillsborough prosecutors are seeking a death sentence.

“Ruenes Vinet lured the victim, even asking him to wear jewelry when they met,” Lopez said in a statement. “The defendant then brutally stabbed the victim to death and pawned his jewelry for cash. This crime was cold, calculated, and premeditated, and a jury should decide whether the defendant will be sentenced to death if he is convicted. My thoughts remain with the victim’s family as we fight for justice together.”

Lopez, in the nearly two years since she was appointed to be state attorney, has expanded the office’s pursuit of the death penalty. When Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended her predecessor, Andrew Warren, the office had five death penalty prosecutions pending. That had shrunk from a high of 24 cases that Warren inherited when he took office in 2016.

An arrest affidavit in Ruenes Vinet’s case describes an investigation that began June 4 when someone found Jimenez, 47, lying in a ditch along E Chelsea Street in the East Lake-Orient Park area, a little east of the Tampa city limit. He’d been stabbed several times in his chest. Investigators found blood inside his silver Buick, which was parked nearby.

In Jimenez’s phone, Hillsborough sheriff’s detectives found a string of WhatsApp messages that he exchanged shortly before his death with Ruenes Vinet. They also found a voice message from June 1 in which Runes Vinet told Jimenez to “come out” and “to wear his jewelry,” according to an arrest affidavit. He also told him that he had a woman with whom Jimenez could hang out, the affidavit states.

Detectives learned that Ruenes Vinet visited the Ultra Jewelry Pawn Shop days after the slaying and pawned three gold rings. The rings belonged to Jimenez, detectives wrote.

Ruenes Vinet told detectives he’d bought the rings from Jimenez on June 1, according to affidavit. He said he needed to resell them to make money to pay his apartment rent.

But surveillance video recorded June 2 showed Jimenez wearing the rings that day at his home, detectives wrote.

Ruenes Vinet said he last saw Jimenez when they left work the afternoon of June 3, the document states. Their employer is not named in the affidavit. He said he went to his apartment late that day and stayed there until the next morning. But detectives identified surveillance video that showed his car being driven away from the apartment complex that night. Data from his phone placed him at the murder scene a little after 9 p.m. June 3, according to the affidavit.

The state’s pursuit of a death sentence does not mean that Ruenes Vinet will get it. By law, if a jury finds him guilty of first-degree murder, the state will then have to prove at least one aggravating factor.

A court paper lists the aggravating factors that the state says qualify death as an appropriate penalty. They include that the murder was committed in a “cold, calculated and premeditated” manner, that it was committed during a robbery and for pecuniary gain, and that it was “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.”

Ruenes Vinet’s defense will be able to present mitigating evidence, or reasons that weigh against the death penalty, for a jury to consider. If he is ultimately sentenced to death, he will be entitled to appeal his conviction and sentence, a process that typically lasts decades.

The state’s decision comes weeks after Lopez announced she would seek the death penalty in the case of Angel Cuz Choc, a Guatemalan man accused in the brutal killings of his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter in May.

Other defendants facing death in Hillsborough County include Jermaine Bass, charged with killing his 5-year-old daughter and seriously injuring his 8-year-old son by shooting them in 2022 at their North Tampa apartment.

The state also is seeking death against Phillip Stapleton, who is charged with the 2023 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Ashley Voss, and another unrelated murder from 2021.

The death penalty is also being sought in the case of Billy Adams III, the Tampa rapper charged in the death of Alana Sims and her unborn child, a crime that occurred three days after Adams was acquitted in a separate double murder case.