Trial shifts focus to arrest
Jurors shown video of chase of accused killer, ex-border Patrol agent
Bexar County jurors on Tuesday saw video of the dramatic chase of a Border Patrol supervisor suspected of killing four sex workers in Laredo in 2018.
Juan David Ortiz, 39, is on trial for capital murder in the deaths of the four. All were sex workers in Laredo’s drug and prostitution underworld who knew the defendant, testimony has established.
Ortiz is accused of killing Melissa Ramirez, 29, on Sept. 3, 2018, Claudine Anne Luera, 42, on Sept. 13, 2018, and Guiselda Alicia Hernandez, 35, and Janelle Ortiz, 28, both early on Sept. 15, 2018 shortly before his arrest.
His trial was moved from Laredo to San Antonio because of extensive media coverage.
A pair of Texas Department of Public Safety troopers testified Tuesday, walking the jury through their bodycam video of their chase of Ortiz.
They had been tipped off by another trooper who had been approached at the Stripes Circle K gas station and convenience store by a frantic Erika Peña, who testified Monday she had escaped Ortiz’s pickup after he pulled a gun on
her.
Ortiz’s white Dodge pickup was parked at the same store later that night and the troopers tried to arrest him when he came out of the building.
“Stop right there! Stop, stop, stop, get on your knees,” the troopers Johnhenry Bradshaw and Abiel Obregon can be heard ordering in the video. “We have a positive ID that this truck is matched with two murders.”
When asked if the white pickup was his, Ortiz responded, “Yeah,” then told the troopers they were “freaking him out” before he turned and ran.
Ortiz was pursued by DPS troopers, the Webb County Sheriff’s SWAT team and other deputies, and Laredo police. They chased him to a nearby vacant property that was near a parking garage, and narrowed their
search to each floor of the building, which was next to the Ava Hotel.
Once the officers reached one of the top floors of the parking garage, they saw Ortiz crouching near a black pickup. They ran toward him, screaming, and arrested him. Video next showed Ortiz face down on the concrete as they handcuffed him.
Officers checked his pockets, then stood him up to examine him for injuries. They found none. He was put in a sheriff’s office vehicle and driven away.
Later Tuesday, Capt. Federico Calderon of the Webb County Sheriff’s Office testified about finding the still-unidentified body of Ramirez, left on the shoulder of Jefferies
Road. She was face down, clutching a bag of M&MS in her left hand. She had been shot in the head.
Investigators discovered three 40-caliber shell casings near Ramirez’s body, Calderon said.
Ten days later, another woman was found, still alive, a few miles away, off Toll Road 255 north of Laredo in Webb County, he said. Later identified as Luera, she also had been shot above the shoulders, and the same kind of shell casings were nearby. She died in a hospital the same day.
Relatives of the victims took up the majority of the first three rows of the courtroom gallery near the jury box in Bexar County Court at Law No. 5, with local media on the back two rows. National news agencies occupied most of the side behind the defendant and his lawyers.