Defendant sent pictures of rifle to wife
A San Antonio man accused of killing his wife sent her pictures of a rifle and bullets, along with text messages that alternately indicated that he loved her, hated her and wanted to end his life, according to evidence presented Monday in the trial of Gabriel Martinez.
“I just want to kill myself so (expletive) bad,” prosecutor Ryan White read aloud from a text message, as San Antonio police crime scene investigator Robert Rackley testified in the second day of the trial.
Martinez also apologized for pointing a gun at his wife in one text, testimony showed.
Martinez, 37, is charged with murder in the May 18, 2016, death of his common-law wife, Lori Lee Ortiz, 35. He’s accused of shooting her three times, then turning the gun on himself.
Cellphone downloads established that Martinez was angry with Ortiz but desperately wanted her to stay with him, witnesses said. He sent numerous text messages and pictures eight days before her death.
A photograph of a rifle was accompanied by a text that said, “I’m putting it to my heart, and done,” White read aloud to the court.
Earlier Monday, a Fire Department captain testified that Ortiz barely had a pulse when firefighters arrived after receiving a 911 call from the couple’s distraught daughter.
Capt. Ramon Casanova said firefighters arrived at the home in the 7000 block of Myrtle Valley on the Southwest Side to find Ortiz and Martinez both injured.
By the time emergency medical technicians arrived minutes later, Ortiz’s pulse was no longer discernible.
“No pulse was ever discovered by medics,” Casanova testified. “They were never able to find a palpable pulse. They continued working on her all the way to the hospital.”
Ortiz, 35, was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at University Hospital. Martinez, who was critically injured with a gunshot to the abdomen, underwent surgery. He was booked by proxy while he was hospitalized.
Jurors on Monday afternoon saw numerous photographs taken by police crime scene investigators of the master bedroom where the shooting occurred.
The pictures depicted at least six bullet holes at the foot of the bed, in the mattress, comforter, sheets, bathroom mirror and a shower curtain that acted as a door to the bathroom.
Jurors also heard testimony from Bexar County Deputy Medical Examiner Kimberly Molina, who gave details of Ortiz’s three wounds: one in the right upper arm, another in the left upper chest near the breast and the last on the right side in the middle of her back. In the last one, the bullet traveled across her body and hit both kidneys, her aorta, stomach and spleen before it exited on the left side of her back.
“All of these were potentially lethal,” Molina testified.
Martinez pleaded not guilty before Judge Ron Rangel as his trial began Friday morning.
On the first day of the trial, jurors heard testimony from the couple’s daughter, Brianna Martinez, now 18, who told the panel that her father accused her mother of having an affair in the days before her death. She said that the night before the shooting, she saw her father point a gun at her mother while the pair sat at the kitchen table.
The panel also heard a chilling 911 call in which the sobbing teen, 15 at the time, told a 911 operator to “send an ambulance” because her parents had been shot. When asked who shot whom, Brianna Martinez replied, “my dad shot my mom.”
If found guilty of murder, Gabriel Martinez faces up to life in prison.
The trial is being held in the 379th state District Court.