Sons of Boston bar co-owner pleads guilty to helping hide evidence of Marine’s fatal stabbing

Alisha Dumeer, 35, the co-owner of a Boston bar outside of which a bouncer allegedly killed a Marine veteran in March 2022, pleaded guilty Tuesday to an accessory charge for helping the bouncer avoid authorities. 

Dumeer was first indicted last summer. She changed her plea to guilty this week and was sentenced to three years of probation with the first six months on house arrest, according to court documents. She was ordered to perform 100 hours of community service each of those three years. 

Daniel Martinez, a 23-year-old Marine veteran from Illinois, was visiting Boston to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on March 19 of last year. He was stabbed to death outside the Sons of Boston bar at 19 Union St. near Faneuil Hall after allegedly getting into an altercation with Alvaro Larrama, who was working as a bouncer there. Larrama is charged with murder and has pleaded not guilty. 

Prosecutors have said the deadly interaction occurred after the girlfriend of Martinez’s friend was kicked out of the bar for vaping. Larrama and Martinez exchanged words, and Martinez and his friends then walked down to nearby Hennessy’s Bar, where a line was forming outside. 

Larrama allegedly followed the group and confronted Martinez again. Martinez hit Larrama with an aluminum beer bottle and the two engaged in a physical altercation, according to police. It ended when Larrama allegedly stabbed Martinez twice in the chest. 

Larrama returned to Sons of Boston and told Dumeer, who was working that night, what happened, prosecutors said. Surveillance video showed Larrama removing a Sons of Boston sweatshirt in a locker room at the bar and putting it into a trash can. Dumeer handed him a new shirt, which he put on before leaving. 

Later on, Dumeer returned to the locker room and can be seen on surveillance footage looking at the camera and then stepping into a blind spot, prosecutors said. Police later recovered the clothing and found bloodstains on the sweatshirt.

Dumeer told police during their investigation that she learned about the killing through the news, prosecutors said. 

“I’m not a bad person. I have a lot to give,” Dumeer said this week, according to The Boston Globe. “I’m just very sorry. I couldn’t imagine this happening to someone in my family. I’m sad that we’re all here today. I hope they forgive me and let me live a better life. I’m sorry.”

Martinez’s family had traveled from near Chicago to tell a judge of their pain. 

“It is a daily struggle for me to put on a happy face for co-workers and people around me, so that I don’t make them uncomfortable with all of the sadness that I carry around with me,” Martinez’s mother, Apolonia, said in her victim impact statement Tuesday, according to the Globe. 

Apolonia Martinez said that Dumeer’s actions at Sons of Boston were “reprehensible,” but that she could not hate Dumeer and forgave her. Still, she said she wished Dumeer would spend time behind bars. 

“The thought of you being comfortable at home with your family as a jail sentence turns my stomach,” Apolonia Martinez said, per the Globe. “Your sentence will eventually end, and you’ll resume your normal life putting all this behind you. Sadly, my family does not have that option. Our family is serving a life sentence.”