{"id":65152,"date":"2025-11-26T00:41:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T00:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/65152\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T00:41:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T00:41:06","slug":"el-pasoan-sentenced-in-killing-of-15-year-old-bel-air-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/65152\/","title":{"rendered":"El Pasoan sentenced in killing of 15-year-old Bel Air student"},"content":{"rendered":"

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — Anthony Nguyen Duenas pleaded guilty to manslaughter and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the April 2023 death of 15-year-old Bel Air High School student\u00a0Ryan Romero<\/a>. The El Paso District Clerk confirmed to ABC-7 that Duenas pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten years in prison.<\/p>\n

Duenas was arrested more than two months after Romero’s death. He was originally charged with murder and aggravated assault. In addition to Romero, court documents<\/a> obtained by ABC-7 at the time of Duenas’ arrest stated that he also shot a 17-year-old girl.<\/p>\n

In 2023, investigators said that Romero and an unidentified friend had been walking around a party, allegedly threatening to shoot people. The friend told investigators that Romero had a fake gun in his waistband that he was showing off to people as he threatened to shoot them. The friend admitted he had also pretended to have a gun and make threats.<\/p>\n

Police documents state\u00a0Duenas got into an argument with Romero\u00a0and his friend during a mosh pit. Once the party started to end and Romero and his friend were leaving, investigators say Duenas and a group of people got into another argument with the duo. Romero allegedly showed Duenas the fake gun in his waistband, and that’s when\u00a0Duenas shot him<\/a>, according to court records.<\/p>\n

A friend of Duenas claimed that he believed that Romero’s gun was real. He also provided investigators with videos of Romero and his gun at the party.<\/p>\n

ABC-7 spoke to the Romero’s family shortly after his death. Watch that interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — Anthony Nguyen Duenas pleaded guilty to manslaughter and aggravated assault with a deadly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-65152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}