Teen convicted in TX Sonic worker’s death said he was supposed to shoot the ground: police

The 13-year-old found guilty in the May shooting that killed a North Texas Sonic employee told a friend he was supposed to shoot at the ground but accidentally shot the man instead, according to a copy of the arrest warrant affidavit for the teen’s aunt obtained by the Star-Telegram.

The boy’s aunt, 18-year-old Ashley Gomez, also known as Ashley Marmolejo, was arrested Wednesday in Johnson County and charged with manslaughter. According to the affidavit, she admitted giving her then 12-year-old nephew the gun that he used to fatally shoot Matthew Davis.

Police officers were dispatched to the Sonic in the 300 block of South Old Betsy Road in Keene around 9:40 p.m. on May 13. They found Davis lying in the parking lot with multiple gunshot wounds. The 32-year-old father died at a local hospital a few hours later.

Another Sonic employee told police that she saw a red lifted pickup pull up to the speaker box, but nobody pushed the button to order. When the employee went to see what was going on, she saw a man urinating in the parking lot, the affidavit said.

The employee told the man, later identified as 20-year-old Angel Gomez Ocana, that there was a bathroom on the premises, but he didn’t respond. Davis, who was at a nearby bench, got up and said “Hey, did you hear her?” He approached Gomez Ocana, who said, “I don’t give a (expletive),” according to the affidavit.

When Davis told him that was disrespectful, Gomez Ocana took off his shirt and asked Davis if he wanted to fight, the affidavit said. The two men got into a physical altercation, and Gomez Ocana fell to the ground with Davis kneeling over him.

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The other employee said she saw the 12-year-old get out of the red pickup with an AR-style weapon and shoot Davis several times. Gomez Ocana was still on the ground, according to the affidavit. He looked up and asked the teen, “What did you do?” before both of them left the scene in the red truck, the witness told police.

Police found six .22 shell casings at the scene of the shooting, the affidavit said.

Gomez Ocana returned to the Sonic later that night and was arrested. He said he’d gone to the restaurant to get some food with his nieces and nephew. He stopped to urinate before ordering, and Davis “came at him yelling at him, but he couldn’t just stop,” he told police, according to the affidavit.

Davis began fighting him and knocked him down, Gomez Ocana stated. Then “his nephew grabbed a gun from the truck and shot the guy.” Gomez Ocana said at the time that the gun belonged to him, according to the affidavit. He told police that he returned to his home in Rio Vista after the shooting and left his nephew there.

He also told police that the weapon used in the shooting was at his home, but people at the house said they didn’t know where the gun was. Law enforcement officers obtained permission from the homeowner to search but were unable to find the weapon. The homeowner’s wife finally alerted officers that the gun was in a neighbor’s back yard in tall grass.

The teen was arrested in Rio Vista. His name has not been released because of his age. He and Gomez Ocana were charged with murder. The teen was found delinquent of murder, the equivalent of guilty in juvenile court, on Oct. 5.

Ashley Gomez, the wife of Gomez Ocana, returned with her husband to the scene of the shooting and was interviewed by police. She was seen texting on her phone while officers coordinated with Johnson County law enforcement to pick up the weapon at the Rio Vista home. Police seized her phone and her husband’s phone for forensic downloads, according to the affidavit.

Investigators discovered there was another witness who had been in the truck at the time of the shooting. When they reviewed forensic evidence from Gomez’s phone on June 21, they found messages between her and the witness from the night of May 13 “discussing what to say between (the teen involved in the shooting) and Angel,” the affidavit said.

Police also noticed several text messages on Gomez’s phone that were determined to be from the teenage shooter prior to his arrest. They obtained a search warrant and seized the 13-year-old’s phone from his home.

Investigators examined that phone on Sept. 21 and found a screenshot of a text message from the juvenile to a friend. The teen said his uncle had gotten into a fight “and then my aunt gave me tha gun and I was supposed to shoot tha ground and I in accident shot thaa person,” the text read according to the affidavit.

The screenshot was taken around 3:30 a.m. on May 14, a few hours after the shooting. The text message was deleted after the screenshot was taken, the affidavit said.

On Oct. 5, the teen’s former lawyer gave the investigator a statement that Gomez had written on May 26. In it she states that her husband had gotten into a fight with a Sonic employee.

“I reached under my seat and got my HK .22 pistol and handed it directly to (the teen) and said ‘Go.’” Gomez said, according to the affidavit. “I meant for him to go out and stop the fight by scaring the guy.”

A warrant was issued for Gomez’s arrest on Wednesday and she was arrested the same day. Gomez “intentionally, knowingly by her own conduct committed the offense of manslaughter by providing a firearm to (the juvenile) and instructed him to shoot Matthew Davis causing his death,” the affidavit states.

The teen has been in juvenile detention since his arrest. Davis’ family has asked the judge to sentence the 13-year-old to 40 years, according to WFAA-TV.

The conclusion of the sentencing hearing for the juvenile has been postponed twice. His attorney Seth Fuller told the Star-Telegram on Thursday that the hearing is tentatively scheduled for Nov. 14.

Fuller said the teen “was put in an impossible situation,” and believes he won’t re-offend if given probation. He’s concerned about the juvenile being kept in detention for so long.