Charges filed in Monte killing

Charges were filed Tuesday in the deadly stabbing of an 18-year-old mother outside of a Pizza Ranch restaurant in Montevideo, Minn.

Darek Nelson, 24, is charged with second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter and two counts of second-degree assault in the Jan. 13 stabbing death of Pizza Ranch coworker Vinessa Lozano.

 

According to the criminal complaint, Nelson had strong feelings toward Lozano, but the feelings weren't mutual. He had been thinking about the deadly stabbing since Jan. 9, saying he planned to bring his hunting knife to work that Friday and that he would kill her if she treated him badly.

Nelson said Lozano was the “second dearest person to me” but that she lied to him and never showed up to meet him at his mother’s house. He was “miserable” and felt “shunned” when he went to work last Friday, and said he never called his parents for a ride home because he “knew what he was going to do.”

Lozano had just wrapped up her shift and was out in the parking lot when Nelson allegedly attacked her with a knife. When Montevideo police arrived at the Pizza Ranch, Lozano was on the sidewalk, moaning and bleeding profusely from multiple stab wounds and cuts.

Video from a responding squad car appears to show Nelson look at the police car, then stab Lozano one more time before dropping the knife and walking away.

When an officer asked Lozano who stabbed her, she said “Darek Nelson.”

Lozano struggled to breathe and her consciousness faded as officers and paramedics tried to save her life, but the 18-year-old mother of an 18-month-old boy was pronounced dead that night at Chippewa County Montevideo Hospital.

When police asked Darek Nelson what happened, he said, “I killed her.” He described how he stabbed Vinessa Lozano in the back as they walked out of the restaurant. She collapsed, falling toward her car and yelled, “What are you doing?”

Nelson said a witness came out of the Pizza Ranch and tried to intervene, but backed off when he swung the knife at him. He admitted to stabbing Lozano a few more times as Montevideo police arrived.

"Ran outside, tried to pull him off. He had swung toward me," said O'Malley.

Nelson faces up to 40 years in prison if he is convicted on the second-degree murder charge. He remains jailed on a bail of $750,000.