Robbery Suspected in 2 Deaths

Employee Stabbed at Tire Store; Woman Shot at Home

A Silver Spring man and a Capitol Heights woman were killed in Prince George's County on Thursday evening in what appeared to be unrelated attempted robberies, police said.

The slayings, a stabbing and a shooting, were reported within a period of about 40 minutes and occurred nearly six miles apart, police said.

In the first incident, about 8:30 p.m., a witness at the Two Brothers Tire City store in the Brentwood area found store employee Fernando Monge moaning on the floor, said Cpl. Diane Richardson, a county police spokeswoman. The witness told police that he also saw a person rummaging through the cash register, Richardson said.

A SWAT team responded and found Monge, 43, with stab wounds, police said. Officers searched the building for nearly two hours before declaring that no suspects were inside. Monge, a father of three, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Relatives said yesterday that Monge had spent the day with one of his young sons before reporting for a night shift at the tire store, in the 4300 block of Bladensburg Road.

Monge immigrated to the United States from El Salvador in 1989, his sister-in-law Rosa Ruiz said. Ruiz said Monge, who often worked six days a week, was close to his children and spent what free time he had with his family.

"He was always working very hard," Ruiz said.

Ruiz said Monge and his wife, Haydee Monge, had been planning to travel with their children to El Salvador to visit relatives.

Shortly after 9 p.m. Thursday, county police were called to a house in the 4100 block of Shell Street in Capitol Heights, where they found a woman fatally shot.

Richardson said Lekeysia R. Byrd, 33, was home alone, talking on the phone, when someone apparently knocked on her door and broke in.

The person on the phone with Byrd heard the intruder demand money and start shooting, Richardson said. She said Byrd, who lived in the house with her boyfriend, was shot several times and died in the home.

Police are investigating the possibility that she was specifically targeted, Richardson said.

Attempts to reach Byrd's relatives yesterday were unsuccessful.