Onelio Castro-Arroyo pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and a Miami-Dade judge sentenced him to 20 years.

Twenty years concurrent with 60 is the murder term the Herald says the judge imposed Monday. It does not replace the January sentence. The Herald's sentencing story lists him at 59 and says he was calm and did not speak. An earlier Herald story, from the hearing where he rejected this same 20-year number, listed him at 58 and said he shouted that he was not accepting anything. The sentencing story does not give a street block. The earlier story does.

The Miami Herald reported Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, that Onelio Castro-Arroyo, 59, stood in an orange jail uniform Monday and pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Yanelys Gonzalez Santander, 45. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Ellen Sue Venzer sentenced him to 20 years in prison. The Herald reported that term will run concurrently with a 60-year sentence the same judge imposed in January, because he violated probation when he was arrested on the murder charge. He had served five years for a 2014 gas-station explosion caused by siphoning fuel and was on probation after that, the Herald reported. El Nuevo Herald published the same reporter's account in Spanish the same day, with the same plea, the same 20-year term, and the same concurrent 60-year sentence. A guilty plea is the admission on that count. The 20 years is the murder term, and the Herald says it runs at the same time as the January sentence rather than after it.

The Herald reported he was calm throughout Monday's proceeding and did not address the court. It reported that at earlier hearings he had lashed out at the judge, shouting in Spanish that he wanted to represent himself, demanding to fire his attorneys because they were "accusing me," and slamming his cuffed hands on the wood partition in the jury box. An earlier Herald story, about a hearing before this plea, listed his age as 58, not 59, and reported he rejected a 20-year offer, shouted "I'm not accepting anything," and that prosecutors then said they would seek life if a jury convicted him. That earlier story is what he did before Monday. Monday, in the Herald's sentencing account, is the day he took the 20 years.

Gonzalez Santander was killed on May 21, 2019, while she was in the driver's seat of her car just outside Miami Lakes, the Herald reported, citing court records. The earlier Herald story placed that car in the 6800 block of Northwest 179th Street. The sentencing story does not give the block. The Herald reported that court records say the couple's daughter, who was in the car and was 7 at the time, told investigators that her father killed her mother. She is not named here. The Herald reported detectives found a bloody knife, with Gonzalez Santander's DNA on it, in a dumpster outside his residence, and that he turned himself in shortly afterward and admitted stabbing her. Those details are what the Herald says the court records contain. They are the record behind the plea he entered Monday.

The Herald reported that an older daughter Gonzalez Santander had from a previous relationship spoke at the sentencing and said she had spent seven years thinking about what she would say. "That is the only title you're going to take your grave," the Herald quoted her. "I want you to look at me because this is the last time you're going to hear about me or my sister." The Herald reported she also read a statement from her younger sister, Castro-Arroyo's daughter, who is now a teenager and who witnessed the killing. That younger daughter is not named here, and her statement is not quoted here. After the sentence, the Herald reported, Judge Venzer said, "May God have mercy on your soul." The plea and the 20-year term are what the Herald says happened Monday. The January 60-year term is a separate sentence, and the Herald says the new one runs at the same time. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.