A 26-year-old Nebraska man has pleaded guilty in the fatal shooting of his stepfather outside a Walmart in Columbus, moving a case that began with a first-degree murder charge toward sentencing nearly 10 months after the killing.
Court documents made public Friday show Manuel Mesa-Cabrera pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and a weapons charge in Platte County. The plea changes the course of a case that had been set for trial and closes the question of whether prosecutors would try to prove a planned killing before a jury. The immediate stakes now center on sentencing in April, when a judge is expected to decide Mesa-Cabrera’s punishment in the death of 42-year-old Anhil David Mirabal Hernandez.
The case began on May 27, 2025, when officers were called at about 6:20 p.m. to the Walmart at 818 E. 23rd St. in Columbus. Police said they found Mirabal Hernandez on the ground with a gunshot wound and started emergency aid before medics arrived. Capt. Doug Molczyk said officers “immediately rendered aid” until Columbus Fire Department personnel took over. Mirabal Hernandez was taken to Columbus Community Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. Police identified Mesa-Cabrera as the suspect shortly after the shooting, and authorities said he turned himself in at the Columbus Police Department not long afterward. From the start, the broad outline of the case was clear: the victim was the suspect’s stepfather, the shooting happened in a busy store parking lot, and the arrest came within a short time of the killing. What remained unclear in the first public accounts was how the two men ended up there together and what had happened in the moments just before the gunfire.
Those details emerged later in arrest records and follow-up court reporting. Investigators said Mesa-Cabrera asked his stepfather to go to Walmart with him to help find a vehicle part. According to the arrest affidavit, the two drove to the store together and parked, and Mirabal Hernandez walked ahead of Mesa-Cabrera toward the service doors. The affidavit says Mesa-Cabrera called out to him, and when Mirabal Hernandez turned around, Mesa-Cabrera pulled a handgun from his waistband and fired once into his torso and once into his head. Investigators said Walmart surveillance cameras captured the shooting. Police later recovered a 9 mm Smith and Wesson handgun from the glove compartment of Mesa-Cabrera’s Jeep, and officers said searches of the vehicle and home also turned up additional 9 mm ammunition, a cartridge casing and the handgun box. Authorities said the gun had been legally purchased about two weeks before the shooting. After surrendering, Mesa-Cabrera told officers he came in because he “knew he was going to be arrested,” according to the affidavit.
The official record has also traced the case through a series of criminal filings. Columbus police first booked Mesa-Cabrera on suspicion of first-degree murder and use of a firearm to commit a felony. Prosecutors later filed formal charges carrying the same allegations. At a court appearance in July 2025, Mesa-Cabrera stood mute when asked to enter pleas, and the court entered not guilty pleas on his behalf. At that stage, the case was still moving toward trial, with a status hearing set for late September and a jury trial scheduled to begin in early October. Public reports available at the time did not explain why that timetable changed, but by Friday the case had shifted sharply. Instead of heading into a contested trial, Mesa-Cabrera admitted guilt to second-degree murder and a weapons charge. The public reporting on the plea did not spell out all terms of the agreement, and it did not say in open detail which parts of the original first-degree murder theory prosecutors agreed to leave behind in exchange for the guilty plea.
Court records cited in local coverage also added a layer of personal and medical history that investigators considered relevant to the case. According to the arrest affidavit, Mesa-Cabrera had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was no longer taking medication or seeing a doctor. The affidavit said he had been experiencing homicidal thoughts for a year or two before the shooting and that those thoughts worsened in the days leading up to Mirabal Hernandez’s death. Public documents and news reports, however, have not described a clear argument, financial dispute or immediate confrontation between the men at the store. The known account instead centers on the allegation that Mirabal Hernandez believed he was helping his stepson shop for a vehicle part when he was led to the Walmart parking lot. That claim has become one of the most significant features of the case because it goes to planning, trust and how prosecutors initially framed the killing. Even so, the public record remains incomplete on several points, including what Mesa-Cabrera’s defense team may have argued in plea negotiations and whether any family members addressed the court before the agreement was reached.
The setting of the shooting also shaped the case from the start. The parking lot outside a large retail store is a public, heavily traveled place, and the allegation that the shooting unfolded near the service entrance helped explain why investigators were able to move quickly. Police had a defined scene, surveillance footage and a suspect who surrendered within a short period. Those factors often narrow the central factual dispute in a homicide case, and that appears to have happened here. By the time the plea was announced, there was no public sign of a lingering identity question, no unresolved issue about who fired the shots and no indication that authorities were looking for another suspect. The remaining unknowns were more personal than forensic: what, if anything, had been building inside the family before May 27, what Mesa-Cabrera intended when he asked for help at Walmart, and how prosecutors and defense lawyers arrived at a plea to second-degree murder rather than taking the case to a jury on the original first-degree charge.
The next step is sentencing, which local reporting says is scheduled for April. Public reports published Friday did not provide a more precise date or outline what either side will ask the judge to impose. What is clear is where the case stands now. A homicide that began with emergency calls to a Walmart parking lot, an arrest later that same evening and months of first-degree murder proceedings has ended in a guilty plea. The April hearing is expected to be the next public milestone, when the court will formally sentence Mesa-Cabrera in the killing of his stepfather.
Author note: Last updated March 21, 2026.