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Mar 15, 2024

'Best son' killed by man found naked in Holy Cross area

Ana Brito and her young son, Derian Dominguez, smile in an undated photo. Dominguez was beaten to death with a golf club at a house in New Orleans' Holy Cross neighborhood on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2023.

Ana Brito and her young son, Derian Dominguez, smile in an undated photo. Dominguez was beaten to death with a golf club at a house in New Orleans' Holy Cross neighborhood on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2023.

Ana Brito woke up Thursday morning in her New York City apartment sick to her stomach. She didn’t know why until 4:45 p.m., when she got a call from the Orleans Parish coroner's office.

“Are you Derian’s mother?” the caller asked.

Brito's 23-year-old son, Derian Dominguez, had been found found unconscious that morning in a house in the Holy Cross neighborhood. Brito panicked, but hoped the call was a scam.

It wasn’t until she got an attorney and flew into New Orleans on Friday that she learned her son, a construction worker in town on a job assignment, had been bludgeoned to death with a golf club.

Derian Dominguez smiles in an undated photo. He was beaten to death with a golf club at a house in New Orleans' Holy Cross neighborhood on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2023.

“There is nothing worse than for you to know that you lost somebody and not know why,” she said.

Police booked Dominguez' housemate, Adam Belanouane, 24, with second-degree murder, after finding him walking near the house wearing nothing but a construction worker's white hard hat. According to the police affidavit for his arrest warrant, Belanouane suspected his girlfriend was cheating with Dominguez.

Brito collapsed upon hearing of the details. Now, she is begging for answers in a case that she said has ruined two families.

“I know [Belanouane’s] family has got to feel this, too,” she said. But "they … can still have him; I can’t see Derian anymore.”

Dominguez was in New Orleans with a friend, both working for the friend’s family business, Brito said. They worked in construction and made occasional trips from the company’s headquarters in Virginia to New Orleans for jobs.

Recently, Dominguez had been staying at Belanouane’s home at 5908 Burgundy St.

Derian Dominguez is seen in an undated photo. He was beaten to death with a golf club at a house in New Orleans' Holy Cross neighborhood on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2023.

Brito said she wasn’t sure how her son otherwise knew Belanouane, but she insisted he would never have intervened in someone else’s relationship.

“He hated cheaters. That’s just not who he was,” she said.

In fact, Brito said, her son wasn’t looking for romance at all. He was “staying focused” on finishing a business degree at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, she said. He was set to graduate in 2023 but took a year off when his father, Rafael, was diagnosed with cancer.

Dominguez was born to Dominican parents in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx through junior high school, Brito said. For high school, he moved to upstate New York with his father and stepmother, and played football all four years, Brito said.

He had two older sisters, and a younger brother and sister from his father’s next relationship. Brito remembered her own youngest as a free-spirited but particular child, who played piano by ear and adored Hot Wheels.

“He was the best brother and the best son. From all my kids, he’s the one who always called me to see how I was doing,” Brito said. “They all think that he was my favorite. No, he was just the boy.”

Derian Dominguez puts a corsage on Lindsey Heier in an undated photo. Dominguez was beaten to death with a golf club at a house in New Orleans' Holy Cross neighborhood on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2023.

Dominguez wanted to be a businessman, said his uncle, José Brito. And he was working for a company that he thought could teach him leadership, his mother added.

“His idea is, he didn’t want to work for anybody,” she said.

Lindsey Heier met Dominguez in a middle school science class. In high school, she said, he was “the most popular person around.”

“We always talked about living near each other, being best friends," she said. "I’ll probably always be like ‘what if?'”

Police were called to Belanouane's house on Thursday at 7:10 p.m. They found Dominguez covered with a white bedsheet, a mobile phone resting on his torso.

A voicemail on the phone captured the sound of two men fighting and helped link Belanouane to the crime, police said. The weapon, a putter, was under Dominguez’s head, brain matter on the floor.

Belanouane missed a Friday morning court hearing on the murder charge. By then, according to Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office records, he was on suicide watch at the jail.

Brito plans to return to New York as soon as possible, where her family is waiting for her and hoping soon to receive Dominguez’s body. So far, however, Brito said she’s disappointed in the Police Department’s lack of communication.

“I called the detective, and when he answered [he said] ‘I can’t talk right now. I am doing police things,’” Brito said. “No police [talk] like that.”

“I need to make sure that this kid pays for what he’s done.”

Email Gabriella Killett at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter, @GEKillett.