A man was killed in Farmington in March, his body left in the wood line behind a condominium complex on Talcott Forest Road, and for nearly four months the public record held no name for who did it. On Friday, the Farmington police supplied one.
Cynthia Martinez, 27, of Meriden, has been charged with the murder of Derick William Mercado-Labonte, a 29-year-old man from Bridgeport, along with unlawful discharge of a firearm, tampering with evidence, and criminal use of a firearm. She was held on a $3 million bond and was scheduled to be arraigned Friday in Torrington Superior Court. She is presumed innocent, and everything below is an accusation the state still has to prove, not a verdict.
What the record shows is spare. Officers were called to Talcott Forest Road around 10 a.m. on March 19 for what was first logged as an untimely death under suspicious circumstances. They found Mercado-Labonte in the tree line behind the complex with what police described as multiple traumatic injuries. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide.
Getting from that morning to an arrest took the better part of four months and more than one agency. Farmington police led the case, with help from the Connecticut State Police Western District Major Crime Squad, the Office of the State's Attorney for the Judicial District of Litchfield, the chief medical examiner, the state forensic laboratory, and the Meriden Police Department. Beyond the charges and that thin account of the scene, the department has released nothing else, and has said it intends to keep it that way while the investigation is open.
The $3 million bond tells you how the state reads this case. Our Farmington arrest log runs bonds in the hundreds and the low thousands week after week: a shoplifting at Westfarms, a DUI on Scott Swamp Road, a warrant served at headquarters. This charge landed on that same routine log, the July 10 to 13 edition that also recorded three unrelated traffic arrests. A number with six zeros does not belong on a page like that, and that is the point.
We do not chase court dates at the Mercury, and I am not going to pretend to know how this ends. But a man was killed in this town in March, and naming a suspect is not the same as answering for it. Farmington is owed the difference, and we intend to be here when the rest of the record comes out.