After Ricardo Rojas was shot dead near a gas station air pump, two assailants ran from the parking lot off of North Beach Street in Fort Worth near Gateway Park.
Early on a Sunday in July 2023, one of them entered the neighborhood to the southwest. At one point, he needed to hide. The man, who wore a gray hooded sweatshirt, stopped and went back into the vacant field he had just left. A Fort Worth police patrol car, searching the area for the shooting suspects, passed by.
After the officer was gone, the man, now wearing a T-shirt, emerged.
The second assailant, in a black hoodie consistent with what the shooter was seen wearing on a surveillance video recording, entered the same neighborhood.
That afternoon, Detective Michael Sones searched the field where the two suspects had hidden. There Sones found in a thicket of trees and underbrush a black ski mask. It was consistent with the mask worn by the shooter that is visible on a surveillance video recording. Sones also found a gray hooded sweatshirt consistent with the sweatshirt worn by the second suspect on the recording.
Sones described his finds and the broader investigation in an affidavit supporting an arrest warrant. The affidavit does not refer to a motive for the shooting.
The killing was recorded on a Fort Worth Police Department camera that was pointing at the Valero station during the shooting.
Two suspects can be seen approaching the gas station from the south. The first assailant wore a black hooded sweatshirt, and the second wore a gray hooded sweatshirt.
Rojas entered the Valero parking lot and the front door of the store.
The assailants walked to a wall of the business near the air pump. They appeared to either lean against the wall there or sit down.
Shortly after, Rojas walked from the front doors of the Valero and passed the assailants.
Rojas paused. The suspect in the black hoodie extended an arm and flashes were seen on the video footage. The suspect in the gray hoodie ran. The shooter finished firing his gun, then followed the other suspect.
The assailants appeared to be wearing ski masks.
DNA swabs were collected from the ski mask and the sweatshirt that Sones said he found and submitted to the police department’s crime lab.
A DNA lab conducted testing on the swabs and uploaded a profile found on the ski mask to a database, CODIS. In August 2023 the DNA profile from the ski mask was matched to an existing CODIS sample taken from Diego Galvan.
Galvan last week pleaded guilty to murder in a state district court in Tarrant County.
Adhering to a plea agreement that the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office reached with Galvan, Judge Ruben Gonzalez, who presides in the 432nd District Court, sentenced him to 23 years in prison.
If a jury had found Galvan guilty of murder at trial, the panel would have been directed to consider a prison term of between five to 99 years or life, or, if it found that Galvan was under the influence of sudden passion, two to 20 years.
Galvan, who is 21, will become eligible for parole when he has served half of the sentence.
Four days after the CODIS match was clear and in a conversation with Detective Sones, Galvan denied knowledge of the homicide.
In November 2023, a lab concluded that a sample that Sones collected from Galvan under a search warrant showed that Galvan’s DNA is a match to DNA recovered from the ski mask.
Rojas, who was 35, suffered gunshot wounds in his torso and left lower leg, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office. He died at John Peter Smith Hospital about 45 minutes after he was shot.
The suspect who was not the shooter was not charged in the case.
Galvan’s defense attorney, Timothy Brown, did not respond to a reporter’s request for comment.