SAN ANTONIO – For 12 days in 2018, Juan David Ortiz, U.S. Border Patrol supervisory agent, picked up girls on Laredo’s streets, drove them to distant corners of the county and ended their lives with close-range gunshots to the pinnacle.
On Wednesday, a jury unanimously discovered Ortiz responsible of capital homicide, ending for now one of many extra chilling homicide sagas in South Texas historical past.
It additionally concluded a trial that was punctuated with courtroom drama, together with a physician who rushed from the witness stand to deal with a fainting juror and a revealing jailhouse cellphone name that additional incriminated the defendant.
Ortiz, 39, stood stone-faced as the Webb County Choose Oscar Hale learn the decision, after jury deliberations stretched previous 7 p.m. Close by, greater than 20 members of the family of the victims cried or gasped loudly. Ortiz’s mom, seated within the row behind his protection group, collapsed into the arms of a relative, sobbing loudly.
The jury of eight girls and 4 males took 5 hours to succeed in their verdict. Ortiz was mechanically sentenced to life in jail with out parole. He may attraction the choice.
The decision closed a four-year ordeal in Laredo that included greater than a dozen pre-trial hearings and motions, a pandemic that slowed the authorized course of and an emotional trial that contrasted Ortiz’s personal videotaped confession with the sobs of victims’ households.
After the decision, one after the other, members of the family of the victims learn emotional statements as Ortiz stood just a few toes away, dealing with every individual.
“Have you learnt how a lot ache you may have brought on this household?” mentioned Gracie Perez, sister-in-law of Melissa Ramirez, one of many victims. “I hate you for what you probably did and I may by no means forgive you, nor do I believe God will.”
She added: “Monsters such as you don’t even need to breathe.”
From Sept. 3 to fifteen, 2018, prosecutors mentioned, Ortiz picked up the ladies – Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Luera, Guiselda Hernandez and Janelle Ortiz – alongside Laredo’s San Bernardo Avenue, a stretch populated by intercourse staff and drug pushers. One after the other, he drove them out to distant stretches of the county and shot them along with his government-issued .40-caliber handgun, leaving their our bodies slumped on grime roads or below overpasses. All girls have been identified to be intercourse staff who struggled with drug habit.
“Justice to me could be getting my mom again, and I will by no means get my mom again,” mentioned Ciara Munguia, 24, Luera’s daughter, preventing again tears. “However having him responsible helps carry closure. I may sleep higher at evening. I may transfer on with my life.”
In Texas:Border Patrol agent’s homicide trial the newest in string of incidents stirring mistrust
Protection: Ortiz was coerced into confession
Ortiz, an Iraq conflict veteran with the U.S. Navy and a 10-year veteran of Border Patrol, was arrested after he drew his gun on a would-be fifth sufferer, Erika Peña, who fled his pickup truck and alerted police. He had pleaded not responsible to the costs.
All through the trial, protection attorneys painted Ortiz as an Iraq conflict veteran affected by post-traumatic stress dysfunction – and taking a cocktail of prescribed remedy to deal with anxiousness and migraines – who was coerced right into a prolonged interview with police.
“Take a look at the man in entrance of you, the man who was there on the time: Damaged, PTSD, migraine complications, insomnia, nightmares,” lead protection legal professional Joel Perez advised jurors Wednesday throughout closing arguments. Investigators “induced him, they confronted him, they promised him all this stuff,” Perez mentioned. “It was improper inducement.”
However District Lawyer Isidro Alaniz depicted Perez as a killer agent, saying in a closing assertion: “It’s terrifying to have the enemy inside the ranks of regulation enforcement.”
The 2018 killings have been a part of a stretch of violence and homicide by the hands of Border Patrol Laredo Sector brokers that 12 months.
In April 2018, police arrested Ronald Anthony Burgos-Aviles, 33, a Border Patrol agent in Laredo, and charged him with the murders of Grizelda Hernandez, 27, and her 1-year-old son, Dominic. Prosecutors are looking for the loss of life penalty and his trial is tentatively set for January.
A month later, a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed Guatemalan migrant Claudia Patricia Gómez González, 20, after she crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and hid in a vacant lot with different migrants within the close by enclave of Rio Bravo. The ACLU of Texas in 2020 filed a lawsuit towards the agent on behalf of Gómez below the Federal Tort Claims Act for wrongful loss of life, amongst different costs. The lawsuit was paused later that 12 months when the FBI started investigating the incident.
U.S. Customs and Border Safety, which oversees Border Patrol, has declined to touch upon the Ortiz case, saying the company does not touch upon pending litigation. Prosecutors have mentioned Ortiz used his private truck to hold out the murders and was wearing civilian garments, although he used his agency-issued handgun and hollow-point authorities bullets within the slayings.
Immigrant advocates for years have pushed for extra transparency in how the company disciplines its brokers for wrongdoing. They level to various cross-border shootings by Border Patrol brokers over time as a troubling development on the company.
Since January 2010, greater than 245 folks have died as the results of an encounter with an agent with U.S. Customs and Border Safety, which incorporates Border Patrol, in line with a listing compiled by the Southern Border Communities Coalition, an advocacy group.
Survivor’s chilling testimony
One of many trial’s most dramatic moments got here when Peña took the stand on the primary day and recounted the evening Ortiz drove her first to his house in northeast Laredo. That evening, she felt a sudden realization Ortiz had murdered her two shut mates, Ramirez and Luera. She walked out of the house and vomited within the driveway.
Later, when Ortiz drove her to a close-by comfort retailer, Peña mentioned he grew irritable when she inquired about her slain mates. He drew a gun on her along with his left hand and tried to restrain her along with his proper. Peña wriggled out of her shirt and fled to a Texas Division of Public Security state trooper pumping gasoline on the station. She was in a position to establish Ortiz and level out his house to investigators, who arrested him later that evening.
“A way, by some means, I took off operating with no shirt,” Peña from the stand, as she recounted how Ortiz pointed a gun at her face. “I am crying hysterically.”
Dramatic moments at trial
The trial took eight days. The venue had been moved from Laredo, the scene of the crimes, to the Bexar County courtroom system in San Antonio after protection attorneys argued the trial had acquired an excessive amount of publicity in Laredo. Testimony was streamed stay every day by Court docket TV and drew the curiosity of nationwide media retailers.
Households of the victims – wearing shirts emblazoned with the smiling faces of the 4 slain girls – additionally attended, at occasions sobbing by way of crime scene pictures or witness testimony of the killings.
On sooner or later, as Webb County Medical Examiner Corinne Stern testified and defined post-mortem pictures of the victims, one juror fainted, halting the proceedings. Stern, a licensed medical physician, left the witness stand to present him support. The juror regained consciousness and was later dismissed from the trial.
Prosecutors additionally performed all 9½ hours of a videotaped interview carried out by investigators on Ortiz after his arrest, the place he described how he picked up and shot the ladies in distant places. Within the video, Ortiz advised him how he returned to San Bernardo Avenue – Laredo’s red-light district the place the ladies lived and labored – repeatedly, in search of one other sufferer.
“I continued driving on (San Bernardo),” he says within the video. “That is the place the monster got here out.”
On Tuesday, prosecutors additionally performed a jailhouse cellphone name recording between Ortiz, being held at Webb County Jail on the time, and his spouse, Daniela Ortiz. Within the name, Ortiz’s spouse tries to console him as he complains that he is anxious in regards to the prolonged confession he gave investigators throughout his interview.
“I am very involved in regards to the assertion that was made,” Ortiz says within the audio recording.
Because the recording unspooled, Ortiz dropped his head on the desk in entrance of him and quietly wept, dabbing at tears with a tissue. Quickly after, the prosecution rested its case. The protection group rested as nicely with out calling any witnesses.
Earlier this 12 months, prosecutors determined to not search the loss of life penalty, after relations of the victims mentioned they most well-liked Ortiz serve the remainder of his life in jail.
“A part of me thinks it is worse to spend the remainder of your life in jail,” mentioned Joey Cantu, 41, Hernandez’s brother, who served 23 years in a Texas jail. “I can get up day-after-day of my life and know he is in there. I do know he will endure in there. It is laborious.”
Comply with Jervis on Twitter: @MrRJervis.
