Three people are in custody and now criminally charged in connection with a stabbing outside a Plainfield nightclub that left one person dead and three others injured last month, acting Union County Prosecutor Lyndsay V. Ruotolo and Plainfield Police Director Lisa Burgess jointly announced Thursday.
Plainfield residents Jose Rivera Nelson Martinez, 20, Rudy Gonzalez Segovia, 22, and Arquimidis Jossue Alvarado Arias, 29, all are charged with murder, three counts of attempted murder, and related weapons offenses in connection with the death of 30-year-old Olvin Benitez Lopez, also of Plainfield.
Police say shortly after 2 a.m. on Sunday, February 23, members of the Plainfield Police Division responded to a report of a stabbing at the Chez Maree nightclub on Watchung Avenue, according to Union County Assistant Prosecutor Colleen Ruppert, who is prosecuting the case.
At that location, officers found Lopez, having sustained serious injuries, as well as the three surviving stabbing victims, adult males ages 27, 28, and 30.
Lopez was subsequently pronounced dead, and the surviving victims were transported to a local hospital for emergency treatment.
A joint investigation, led by the Union County Homicide Task Force and assisted by the Plainfield Police Division and the Union County Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene Unit and Fugitive Squad, resulted in the three defendants being identified as suspects in the stabbing.
In early March, Segovia was located and arrested without incident at his Plainfield home, and a week later, Arias and Martinez were separately apprehended on the same day in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., respectively, by members of the U.S. Marshals Service working in tandem with representatives of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Segovia was ordered detained pending the outcome of the case shortly after his arrest, while Martinez was extradited back to New Jersey this past Monday to await a detention hearing scheduled to take place Friday in Union County Superior Court. Arias continues to await extradition.
Anyone with information about this matter is still being urged to contact Task Force Sgt. Johnny Ho at 908-403-8271 or Detective Sonia Rodriguez at 908-341-3380.
Convictions on criminal charges of this nature are commonly punishable by terms of up to life in state prison.