A Cameron County grand jury has declined to bring criminal charges over the fatal shooting of Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen killed by a Homeland Security Investigations agent on South Padre Island last year — a case the Department of Homeland Security did not publicly acknowledge for months, and in which the passenger who disputed the government's account died in a car crash last weekend.
Source: Associated Press
The Cameron County District Attorney's Office said in a statement that a grand jury declined to hand up indictments after being presented with the case, the Associated Press reported on Monday. The prosecutor's office provided no further information, and attorneys for Martinez's family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What happened on March 15, 2025
Martinez was shot on March 15, 2025, on South Padre Island, the Cameron County barrier-island resort town then packed for spring break. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents were helping South Padre Island police officers control traffic after an unrelated accident at a busy intersection when Martinez's car approached the officers working the scene.
In the Department of Homeland Security's account, the driver “intentionally ran over” an HSI special agent, leaving the agent on the hood of the vehicle, and “another agent fired defensive shots to protect himself, his fellow agents, and the general public.” DHS gave that statement to ABC affiliate KSAT in San Antonio and has stood by it.
Video later released by the Texas Department of Public Safety appears to cast doubt on that account, ABC News reported. The DPS material identifies HSI Special Agent Jack Stevens at the car; in documents, Stevens said he was struck and knocked backwards by the car's driver's-side front pillar and side mirror. Attorneys for Martinez's mother told ABC News the footage calls the DHS account of the shooting into question.
Source: ABC News
The passenger's account — and his death
The passenger, Joshua Orta, told investigators that when the car approached the accident scene, an officer spotted a container of alcohol in the vehicle but told them to keep moving forward. In a draft affidavit prepared last year, Orta said Martinez did not hit an officer with the car, that the car was “moving very slowly” — “just crawling” — and that an agent fired into the driver's window without giving any warning, commands or opportunity to comply.
Orta, the key eyewitness inside the car, died in a car crash last weekend, according to the family's attorneys. His account survives in that draft affidavit and in his recorded interview with investigators, but he will never be cross-examined on it — and grand jury proceedings are secret, so it is not known what the panel in Cameron County heard.
What is solid
- Martinez, 23, a U.S. citizen, was shot and killed by an HSI agent on South Padre Island on March 15, 2025
- A Cameron County grand jury has declined to indict, the district attorney's office says
- DHS did not publicly disclose its agent's involvement for months after the shooting
- Passenger Joshua Orta disputed the official account in a draft affidavit, and died in a car crash last weekend
What is only claimed
- Whether Martinez deliberately struck an agent, as DHS alleges
- How fast the car was moving when the shots were fired
- Whether any warning or command was given before the agent fired
A shooting that stayed undisclosed
For months, the public record of the shooting did not include the fact that a federal immigration agent had fired the shots. DHS did not reveal its agent's involvement until media outlets reported it. The Associated Press counts the Martinez shooting as the earliest of at least six fatal encounters involving federal agents since the nationwide immigration enforcement operation began in President Donald Trump's second term — which is why a county grand jury's quiet “no bill” on the Gulf Coast has drawn national attention.
Martinez was a U.S. citizen, and the shooting happened not in a raid but at a traffic point after an unrelated accident. For immigrant and diaspora families who drive Texas roads — including Punjabi truckers on Gulf Coast routes — the case is a closely watched test of how such encounters are investigated, and how quickly they are disclosed.
What happens next
The grand jury's decision means no state criminal charges will follow from this presentation of the case. The district attorney's office has given no further details, grand jury deliberations are secret under Texas law, and the family's attorneys — who have challenged the official account using the DPS video — had not immediately responded to the decision. What remains unresolved is the conflict at the centre of the case: two irreconcilable accounts of the same few seconds, with the only passenger witness now dead.