SAN ANTONIO – Newly released records are raising fresh questions nearly a year after a San Antonio man was fatally shot by an ICE agent during spring break in South Padre Island.

Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, was killed March 15, 2025, after officers approached the vehicle he was in near an intersection backed up because of an accident, according to family attorneys. Martinez was vacationing in South Padre Island with his best friend, Joshua Orta, who was the only other person in the car.

Body camera footage released by the Texas Department of Public Safety late Friday night captures officers giving commands as they approach the vehicle. In the video, an officer can be heard saying, “Keep moving keep moving.” Seconds later, another officer can be heard shouting commands before gunfire erupts.

For months, law enforcement has claimed Martinez drove toward officers and ran over a federal agent before shots were fired. But Martinez family attorney Butch Hayes said the newly released videos do not show clear footage supporting that account.

“In all of these videos that were put out by DPS, we don’t see the direct video of that being shown. We don’t see a car moving forward, or that vantage point of the officer there with body cam showing a car coming towards them? Do you think that’s telling?” Hayes said. “I do. I do. I don’t know whether these ICE agents had body cam or whether they had them turned on.”

Hayes said he believes the footage shows Martinez being directed to move and then making a slow turn.

“What happens after the full stop is that there is a very slow turn to the left, and that’s when the officer who shot him claims that he became a threat of some kind. There is nothing in the video, from my perspective, that shows that Rubin was a threat to anyone that evening,” Hayes said. “What I see is a young man being told to go forward, to proceed forward, and then ultimately he’s going to make a left to get out of the way of the accident.”

Hayes also said the shooting shown in the video does not appear justified.

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“This young man did not need to die that night. Whatever occurred that led to his being shot at point blank range… I don’t see the justification for it on the video,” he said.

Orta provided investigators with an account that attorneys say aligns with their understanding of what happened. Orta died last week in a car crash in San Antonio.

In recorded statements, Orta said, “So basically, we’re going through that little route, and we’d had a few drinks.” He added, “We went through that little route and I guess he didn’t know there were officers and I guess he panicked because we ended up right by the accident.”

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Orta described hearing commands and then gunfire. “I just heard an officer saying stop, stop don’t go. And I heard gunshots, pew, pew, pew. I just started hearing ringing,” he said. Orta also told investigators Martinez did not appear to intentionally try to hit an officer: “Slowly, he would not do that. The car started moving again like he didn’t floor it or nothing, it was just slowly moving and they started shooting.”

The case was recently presented to a Cameron County grand jury. Hayes said, “We asked specifically, is there footage? Video footage of anyone being struck by this car, and we understood that the grand jury did not see anything like that.” Jurors ultimately declined to indict the federal agent involved in the shooting, officially closing the investigation.

Hayes criticized the language used to describe the incident. “They use dramatic language in an attempt, I believe, to justify this shooting. If you look at what they say, it does not match up with what the video shows us,” he said.

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Hayes said Martinez’s mother is still seeking answers. “She voted for this president because she believed in his policies. She does not blame the president for her son’s death, but she wants the truth, and she wants change to be made so that other parents don’t have to worry about their children American citizens being pulled over, shot and dragged out, placed face down on a street and then handcuffed and left to die,” he said.

Hayes said a lawsuit is possible, but no decision has been made. The family’s attorneys are asking anyone who was in South Padre Island last March and may have witnessed the incident to come forward.