Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
All three of the suspects arrested for the fatal shooting of an 11-year-old boy have confessed to their roles in the killing, Del Rio Police Department Chief Frank Ramirez said Friday.
“All three of them have confessed to their roles in the killing. There are confessions for all three. We had a few comments saying the suspects didn’t do it, but they did confess,” Ramirez told the 830 Times.
Three Del Rio men have been charged with capital murder in the shooting death on Jan. 16 of 11-year-old Nate Rubio. The arrested persons are Aldo Esquivel, 18; Adolfo Tapia, 19; and Victor Garcia, 17.
Police began their intensive investigation into the shooting when officers were dispatched to a house in the 400 block of San Juan Street at 11:37 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 16, after receiving a call about shots fired at the house, Ramirez said.
The chief said when officers arrived, they entered the residence and found the child deceased with a gunshot wound to the head.
All three suspects were taken into custody by police within days of the shooting.
Ramirez said he credits the speedy resolution of the case to the hard work and determination of the detectives in the police department’s criminal investigations, patrol division and members of the public who called the police tip line with information about the suspects in the case.
“One of the things we want to put out there that was very positive was when we put out the information tip line; we were getting a lot of positive leads from that, so the citizens were very helpful in giving us directions and giving us different suspects that we should look at,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez said officers began working on the scene from the moment they arrived at the San Juan Street residence.
Officers who first responded to the call secured the scene and called the department’s detectives, who began working under the direction of DRPD Senior Officer Trevor Snyder, who has been named the lead detective in the case.
Ramirez said detectives obtained a search warrant for an apartment in the Villas de Val Verde, 1725 FM 2523.
“This is the first place they hit, and they found ballistic body armor, 600 rounds of ammunition, extended magazines for ARs (automatic weapons). They had walkie-talkie radios, kind of like police radios, so they could communicate, and armor-piercing ammunition that will go through police body armor as well as most vehicle doors, so bad dudes that needed to be off the street,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez said detectives are working with a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Explosives and Firearms database called NIBIN, the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, which has initiated a ballistics database for evidence recovered from recent “shots fired” calls from Del Rio over the past four months.
Asked if the fatal shooting was related to some of those other incidents, Snyder, the lead detective in the murder, said, “That’s something we’re still investigating.”
Snyder noted there is still a great deal of work to be done on the case.
“We have an extremely large amount of evidence that needs to be processed, including sending the casings. We still have search warrants to be done. We’re doing a seizure order for the vehicle that was involved, to seize that,” he said.
Snyder also credited the assistance of concerned Del Rioans in the arrests of the suspects.
“Actually, one of the citizens that called us was the reason that I actually established enough probable cause to be able to get the warrants,” Snyder said.
Ramirez added, “I want the citizens to know that they’re helping and how important that is. A little clarification we wanted to put out there, is that at first there was a question, is somebody going around shooting at the children? Or trying to harm them? And the answer is no. They (the suspects) were after somebody else. . . (Nate Rubio) was not the intended target but an innocent victim.”
Ramirez said he wanted to say a public thank-you to the agencies who have assisted the police department in its efforts to bring a speedy resolution to the case: the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), the Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Val Verde County Sheriff’s Office.
In addition to Snyder, Ramirez said he wanted to thank the detectives who worked the case including Lt. Hubert Smith, Cpl. Gorge Mayorga, Cpl. Jesus Vargas, Senior Officer Oscar Gonzalez, Officer James Biscaino, Officer Joshua Garcia and Officer Joe Castillo. From the department’s patrol division, Cpl. Estevan Hernandez.
“As this was going on, they didn’t sleep. They hit it. They stayed on it. They were not giving up, and they were not stopping. I could not be prouder of them. They did a terrific job. Teamwork, cooperation with the other agencies, it all came together. I was hoping I could contribute and help them out, but they were on top of everything, so the best thing I could do was sit back and watch them work, and they did a fantastic job,” the police chief said.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com .
