High-speed chase ends with a suspect shot
By Rob D’Amico
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Valentine
Police shot and killed a man outside of Valentine Monday morning after he invaded a home and held the residents at gunpoint, stole a school district employee’s car and led officers on a high-speed chase, according to a witness’s account. Valentine is a small Far West Texas community west of Marfa on Highway 90.
Vanessa Ornelas, a Valentine native, said she was reading her phone messages in her mobile home just after 8 a.m. when she heard three loud bangs—which she attributed to neighbors who worked with heavy equipment. “When I started walking down the hallway, I was met by this man that had a gun,” she said. “He had it on a strap, like across his chest.”
Ornelas said she began questioning the man. “I put my hands up,” she said. “I asked him what is it that he wanted? What did he need? He didn’t respond to me. All he was doing was mumbling.”
“I started yelling at him,” Ornelas recalled. “I stopped in the hallway because I have two sons’ bedrooms that are right across the hall from each other. So my oldest, who is 18, was still asleep. He sprung out of bed, poked his head out and saw [the man] and got back into his room. I started screaming for my other two kids, who are 10 and 12, to go lock themselves up in a room, stay together, lock themselves up until somebody comes to get them for help. I could hear my little 10-year-old screaming in the background.”
Suddenly, the situation changed after the man dropped his gun. Ornelas said she could tell the gun was no longer in his hands, and she made a move. “I made two large lunges at him, and I told him, ‘Leave, leave, leave.’ He turns around, starts apologizing and makes his way out the side door, which he broke into.”
But then he returned, Ornelas said, and began trying to force his way back in. “I heard him coming up the ramp again. I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I got a folding chair and tried to prop it up against the door, and I felt him pushing on the door to try to come back in again. I threw all my weight from my shoulder against the door. I saw him twitching the doorknob, so I stopped the doorknob from twitching, and when he felt my resistance on it, I heard him back off the door, go down the steps.”
The man then sat outside the mobile home in a white work pickup with a shell. Terrified, Ornelas said her family waited until he pulled away, and then she gathered the kids and her dog and took off to the Valentine Post Office, where her sister works as the postmaster. The family and postmaster locked themselves in the post office and then heard from Valentine resident John Maloney, who had encountered the man earlier. Ornelas said Maloney then recounted that the man arrived at the former gas station he owns and asked for gas. He only spoke Spanish. Maloney gave the man a couple of gallons for his truck, but the man wanted more and tried to enter his house before eventually leaving.
By now, Ornelas said she was in regular contact with a Jeff Davis County deputy who was on his way to Valentine. Then an unusual call came in from the school district––the man had ditched his work truck in the parking lot at the school, found keys left in the ignition of the assistant principal’s SUV and took off with it.
Ornelas said most bizarre was the man then drove slowly back through Valentine, where a crowd had gathered outside the post office. She said she could clearly see him again, and that he was about 5’7”, Hispanic, and medium-set in weight. A Department of Public Safety trooper then arrived, and hearing that the man had driven toward Marfa, sped off after him.
Somewhere on the way to Marfa, the man turned around and headed back to Valentine with police in pursuit. The man turned on FM 505. The stolen SUV then stopped, and at least one officer shot and killed him. It’s not confirmed who shot the suspect.
Jeff Davis County Sheriff Victor Lopez and Presidio County Sheriff Danny Dominguez could not be reached for comment. But in a Facebook post from Jeff Davis County Sheriff’s Office around 10 a.m, the office stated that a previous lockdown of Valentine had been lifted and then stated: “An officer-involved shooting has since occurred. The suspect has been located and the threat has been eliminated. The pursuit ended on RM 505, and the Texas Rangers will be conducting the investigation into the officer-involved shooting.” The Texas Rangers are involved in the investigation, the post said.
A Presidio County Sheriff’s Office Facebook post stated: “During the pursuit, the suspect discharged several rounds at law enforcement officers, which ultimately resulted in the suspect being fatally wounded by law enforcement.”
Ornelas said a trooper told her: “‘We don’t even know who he is. I just know that he’s been shot and killed, and he’s in our custody. And I can tell you that the work vehicle that you saw here comes out of Presidio. It was stolen in Presidio.’”
Ornelas was left rattled, as were her kids. “My poor son is just terrified, and [he told me], ‘Mom, I’m not sleeping here. We need to get a door.’ So I’m trying to figure that out.”
