By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Testimony began Tuesday in the trial of a 19-year-old Del Rio man charged with capital murder in the fatal shooting of an 11-year-old boy in 2022.
The trial of Victor Garcia, charged with capital murder after the shooting death of Nate Rubio, continued Wednesday in the Del Rio Civic Center. The case will go to the jury this morning.
The trial is the first ever held in the civic center, 1915 Veterans Blvd. The courtroom was set up in the civic center’s Red Oak Ballroom.
The jury for the trial was selected Monday, followed by opening statements from Assistant Attorney General Joshua Somers and from Albert Valadez, the Ft. Stockton attorney appointed to represent Garcia.
Jurors first heard from a number of Del Rio Police Department officers involved in the case, including DRPD Senior Officer Eladio Rocha, DRPD Sgt. Jesus Galindo and DRPD Senior Officer Rolando Carbajal.
Rocha, Galindo and Carbajal were among the first officers who responded to 404 San Juan St. in south Del Rio after the police department received a “shots fired” call from a resident there at 12:37 p.m. on Jan. 16, 2022.
Prosecutors played footage captured on Rocha’s body camera as he walked into the small San Juan Street duplex for the first time.
Somers asked Rocha about the situation he found after he arrived.
“We found Nate Rubio, lifeless on the couch,” Rocha said.
Prosecutors also played body camera footage recorded by Galindo and Carbajal.
The recordings showed the officers engaged in the details of police work: escorting two prospective witnesses from inside the apartment and securing them in a police unit, stringing tape to cordon off the crime scene, speaking with a neighbor to obtain footage from her Ring doorbell camera, creating a written list of persons who entered the crime scene and marking the scatter of shell casings on the street outside the duplex.
Rocha’s camera also recorded the capture of Nathan Reynosa, a 20-year-old man who had been seen running from the residence. It was eventually determined that he had been visiting his girlfriend at the San Juan Street house and was not involved in the shooting.
After the testimony from the three police officers, prosecutors called siblings Marissa Sanchez and Jayden Trevino in turn. The brother and sister were inside 404 San Juan St. when the fatal shooting occurred.
Sanchez testified at the time of the shooting she had lived in the home with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend Samuel Torres, her brother Jayden Trevino and a younger brother.
Sanchez said she was in her bedroom with her then-boyfriend, Nathan Reynosa, on the night of Jan. 16, 2022, when she heard gunshots.
Sanchez said her brother Jayden Trevino and his friend Nate Rubio were both in the living room playing video games.
“I heard gunshots and ran into the living room and saw blood,” Sanchez testified.
Sanchez said her brother, Trevino, called 9-1-1, and she told her boyfriend to get out of the apartment.
Sanchez testified she heard at least five to six gunshots and feared for her life. She said she got on the floor as soon as she heard the shots and that her first priority was making sure her brother was safe.
Under cross-examination by Valadez, Sanchez testified she initially did not tell police her boyfriend was in the apartment because she was concerned about the difference in their ages. Sanchez was 14 years old when the shooting occurred, and Reynosa was 20 years old.
Sanchez’s brother, Trevino, told a similar story on the stand. He said he and Nate Rubio, his friend since kindergarten, were in the living room where he was playing a video game and Nate was on his phone. Trevino said he heard the gunshots and yelled at Nate to get down.
“As soon as I saw what happened to Nate, I called the cops,” Trevino said, adding he told police Nate had been shot.
Prosecutors then called several DRPD detectives who assisted with the investigation of Nate Rubio’s shooting, including James Biscaino, Joshua Garcia and Capt. Hubert Smith and Oscar Gonzalez.
Biscaino testified Victor Garcia became a suspect in the shooting almost immediately and spoke about going to Garcia’s grandmother’s home in an attempt to find him.
Prosecutors played Biscaino’s body camera footage of his visit to Garcia’s grandmother’s house, during which she called Garcia and told him police were looking for him.
Garcia on the video can be heard protesting, “I didn’t have nothing to do with anything,” and refusing to come in for questioning.
Detective Joshua Garcia testified he knew the victim of the shooting, Nate Rubio, because Rubio lived near his mother and said Rubio was friends with his 11-year-old nephew.
While the detective was on the stand, prosecutors played videos obtained from a Stripes convenience store at 1300 E. Gibbs St., where Garcia and his co-defendants, Adolfo Tapia and Aldo Esquivel, stopped to buy drinks and snacks after the shooting.
Smith testified about reconstructing the trajectory of the shot that killed Nate Rubio, saying the bullet went through the wall behind Rubio, crossed a hallway and impacted another wall in the bathroom. He said the vanity and sink had to be removed to recover the bullet.
Tuesday’s testimony ended with Detective Oscar Gonzalez on the stand.
Gonzalez said he helped conduct some of the interviews in the investigation and testified about Victor Garcia’s known previous conflicts with Nathan Reynosa, who was in the duplex when the shooting occurred.
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