Defense attorneys sought to cast doubt Friday afternoon on a palm print that prosecutors say was found on the getaway car used in the fatal shooting of a security officer at South Texas College more than two decades ago.
Witness testimony from former McAllen crime scene investigator Heriberto Vigil marked the third day of trial for Roberto Ivonovich Ojeda Hernandez, 42, who is charged with capital murder for his alleged role in the Jan. 13, 1998, shooting death of senior security guard Carlos Hernandez.
He worked for a private security company and was assigned to STC that day when two armed men burst into classroom B-106 during registration. Hernandez was shot by someone with a handgun while an individual armed with a rifle fired eight shots into the floor, sending two sisters and a school employee to hospitals with wounds from bullet shrapnel.
Ojeda, who was arrested by federal Mexican police in July 2018 and was extradited in March 2019, has pleaded not guilty.
Vigil first took the stand Wednesday afternoon and on Friday, questioning centered around his comparison of a partial palm print lifted from the white four-door Dodge Dynasty and the fingerprints he took from Ojeda during an interrogation inside a Reynosa hotel room on Feb. 2, 1999.
Prosecutor Orlando Esquivel said during opening arguments that the vehicle was stolen from Reynosa near where Ojeda lived and witnesses have said they saw a white four-door vehicle speeding away from STC and that vehicle’s owner testified it was stolen early in January 1998.
Police found that vehicle at an H-E-B down the street from STC.
While on the stand, Vigil testified that while he did not lift the print from the vehicle, he did compare Ojeda’s fingerprints to it and that 14 characteristics matched Ojeda’s prints.
He said that in 1998, the McAllen Police Department’s minimum number of characteristics for a match was six.
On cross examination by defense attorney O. Rene Flores, Vigil affirmed there were chain of custody discrepancies regarding the print taken from the car with the crime scene investigator providing conflicting answers on whether another investigator, Miguel Alcantar, provided him that piece of evidence before the meeting in the Reynosa hotel room or whether he took the palm print from the department himself.
There were also two different handwritings on that piece of evidence: Alcantar’s and an unknown person’s.
Alcantar previously testified he lifted the palm print from the vehicle and the card he placed that print on says it was taken from the left front fender of the car.
Flores and his co-counsel, Mauricio Martinez, unsuccessfully sought to prevent Vigil from testifying about his comparison examination of the palm print from the vehicle and the prints he took from Ojeda.
Vigil also testified that there was no evidence collected from the room where the shooting happened that is linked to Ojeda.
During openings, Esquivel, the prosecutor, told the jury about the palm print and also that Ojeda confessed during a video-taped interview in Reynosa more than a year after the shooting.
The jury has not yet seen that video.
Testimony is scheduled to continue Monday afternoon.
