Testimony during the second day of trial for a 42-year-old man accused of killing a security guard during an armed robbery 24 years ago at South Texas College shifted from the recollections of survivors and witnesses to the brass tacks of crime scene investigation.
Roberto Ivonovich Ojeda Hernandez is undergoing a capital murder trial for his alleged role in the Jan. 13, 1998, shooting death of senior security guard Carlos Hernandez.
Hernandez, who worked for a private security company, was assigned to South Texas College and was shot after two armed men burst into a classroom where people were registering for a semester of classes and where part-time employees were collecting cash, check and credit card payments for registration.
Ojeda has pleaded not guilty.
He was arrested in July 2018 by federal Mexican police and extradited to the United States in March 2019.
He had been on the radar of McAllen police, who even conducted a videotaped interview of him in a Reynosa motel room, since 1999.
Former McAllen crime scene investigators Miguel Alcantar and Heriberto Vigil both took the stand Wednesday afternoon to describe their roles in evidence collection, which included videotaping and diagramming the crime scene, latent fingerprint collection, and picking up bullet fragments and the bloody clothing of Hernandez and the three other people who were shot that day.
Sisters Melinda Singleterry, who was 19 then, and Maria Hernandez, who was 27 at the time, were both shot, as was Julio Cesar Rivera, who was a 20-year-old STC employee at the time.
All three were sent to the hospital and testified Tuesday.
Alcantar described going to H-E-B near the campus where police discovered a white four-door Dodge Dynasty that investigators believe was dumped by the two armed men after the robbery and shooting.
Prosecutor Orlando Esquivel said police later recovered a palm print from that vehicle that was matched to Ojeda and that the vehicle was stolen near where he lived in Reynosa.
The registered owner of the vehicle also took the stand Wednesday confirming that the Dodge Dynasty belonged to her and was stolen from her parent’s apartment in early January 1998.
Hernandez’s widow, San Juanita, also testified.
She recalled the day she learned her husband of 12 years and father to their son had been shot and killed.
“I was in shock. I remember I screamed and I yelled and I just threw myself on the floor,” she said.
San Juanita never remarried and their son is now 28.
Testimony is scheduled to continue Friday afternoon.
