A western Texas teen is accused of fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend’s mother and two siblings, ages 13 and 9, authorities said Wednesday.
The 15-year-old boy has been charged with capital murder involving multiple people, the Odessa Police Department said in a news release.
Odessa police responded to an apartment complex on Hunter Miller Way shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday following reports of a shooting. Officers located three victims — one adult and two children with apparent gunshot wounds — all of whom were pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
A 15-year-old, who was named a suspect in the triple shooting, tried to flee but was arrested. He has not been publicly named.
Detectives later determined that the teen had planned to shoot his 15-year-old ex-girlfriend outside her school, but he changed his mind and went to her home instead.
Once he got in, he allegedly shot and killed the girl’s mother, identified as 39-year-old Jessica Rodriguez, officials said. He then fatally shot the victim’s younger children — and his ex’s siblings — a 13-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy, authorities said.
“It was such a tragic and cowardly act of violence,” Odessa Police Chief Mike Gerke said Wednesday at a news conference. “It’s the kind of thing that really marks a community. Particularly in this holiday season, it’s a hurtful, horrible thing.”
The teen was arrested by Odessa police and booked into the Ector County Youth Center.
On Wednesday, the children’s father, Roy Casey Martinez, wrote about the tragedy on a GoFundMe page set up to help with funeral costs, saying “a young boy took the lives of my 9-year-old son, my 13-year-old daughter and their mother, who was my ex-wife.”
“My heart is extremely broken and I keep finding little pieces at a time, wondering which piece goes where,” he wrote in a Thursday update. “It will never be complete anymore, but as long as I keep picking up these small pieces, maybe one day it’ll form some type of shape again.”
The investigation remains ongoing, Odessa police said.
