A defense attorney Monday identified one of his client’s co-defendants as the second suspected shooter in a February drive-by shooting that killed a 6-year-old girl in rural Mission.
Rogelio Garza, who represents 44-year-old Alton resident Juan Ramon Garcia-Olaguez, said evidence that has been handed over to him indicates that 30-year-old Mission resident William Garcia also fired a gun on Feb. 23 at a home in the 2400 block of Valencia Avenue.
Garcia, Olaguez, 43-year-old Alton resident Marco Antonio Chairez and 43-year-old Edinburg resident Daniel Guzman-Flores are charged in a two-count indictment with capital murder of a person under 10 and murder.
The men are accused of killing Yvonne A. Mireles, who was shot in the head and killed as she watched television inside her home.
Garcia’s alleged role in the case was previously not publicly known.
Garza made the comment while asking 370th state District Judge Noe Gonzalez to lower Olaguez’s $1 million bond to $75,000, telling the judge that Garcia, an accused shooter who has bailed out of jail, has a total of $125,000 in bonds.
Olaguez, who is not accused of firing a weapon, has a total of $1,025,000 in bonds in the case and an additional $150,000 in a separate theft case, online jail records indicate.
Gonzalez denied Garza’s bond reduction request because Olaguez is not a citizen. The issue for the judge is that if Olaguez were to flee to Mexico, authorities there would not extradite him back to Texas due to Mexico opposing the death penalty.
The judge, however, said he would revisit the request after prosecutors make their death penalty announcement.
All four suspects potentially face the death penalty, should the Hidalgo County District Attorney’s Office decide to pursue the punishment.
But on Monday, prosecutors said they were not ready to announce whether they would seek such a punishment against any of the suspects.
Garza, who said The Monitor is “always wrong,” also commented on the lack of a decision. Addressing the judge, Garzai said the district attorney told The Monitor that prosecutors would make a decision on the death penalty based on the ballistic testing results.
The defense attorney is mistaken.
It was Assistant District Attorney Hope Palacios, chief of the DA’s Special Crimes Division, who made that representation during Garza’s client’s last court hearing in August. Garza himself, along with the other suspects, their attorneys, the prosecutors and the judge were all present for that hearing.
Like the August hearing, Palacios and Assistant District Attorney Jay Garza said they were not ready to make the announcement because they want to see evidence from Garcia’s iPhone before deciding whether to pursue the death penalty.
The issue there is that Garcia has not provided his password and the DA’s office does not have the technology to open the phone, Palacios explained, saying prosecutors overnighted the phone to San Antonio where the Secret Service has the technology to access it.
The Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office released few details after the Feb. 23 shooting and The Monitor was unable to obtain all of the probable cause affidavits for the four arrests in the case.
Since the June 16 indictment, more details about the case have slowly emerged through court hearings, like the allegation that Garcia also fired some of the more than two dozen rounds Sheriff J.E. “Eddie” Guerra said were fired at the home.
The other accused shooter is Chairez.
Another new detail is that Olaguez is alleged to have driven once around the home before the shooting, which is caught on surveillance video.
Palacios said during the August hearing that a verbal altercation with Mireles’ family precipitated the drive-by shooting but the details of that altercation have not been publicly disclosed.
As for Guzman, he remains jailed on a total of $575,000 in bonds while Chairez is being held on a total of $1,100,000 in bonds.
