Texas authorities have released over 160 pieces of evidence tied to the fatal shooting of 23-year-old U.S. citizen Ruben Ray Martinez by an ICE Homeland Security Investigations agent on South Padre Island, including police body camera footage, photographs, and written statements. The evidence, obtained by Newsweek through a public records request to the Texas Department of Public Safety, offers multiple angles of the moments leading up to and following the shooting on March 15, 2025.
The case demands serious scrutiny. A U.S. citizen is dead. The agent who fired the shots was not indicted by a Texas grand jury. And the only known civilian witness, Martinez's childhood friend Joshua Orta, died in a car crash in February.
What the Evidence Shows
According to Newsweek, the sequence began just before midnight on March 14, when South Padre Island police officers arrived at the scene of a car accident. Martinez, 23, and Orta, 25, arrived just after midnight. Body camera footage from a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department officer captures someone calling out to the vehicle, asking, "Where are you going?" followed by "Hey, stop him!" A South Padre Island officer can be heard shouting repeatedly to stop the vehicle and remove the driver.
From the available footage, it is unclear whether Martinez's vehicle struck an officer. No body-worn camera footage from the HSI agents involved has been released, and it remains unclear whether any such footage exists.
HSI Agent Jack Stevens, who fired the fatal shots, provided a written statement describing the situation as he perceived it:
"Upon observing the vehicle strike SA Sosa causing him to fall onto the hood of the vehicle and driving through the scene, with SA Sosa clinging to the vehicle's hood, I discharged my service issued handgun firing through the open driver's side window striking the driver multiple times."
Stevens fired three shots through the driver's side window. He wrote that he saw no alternative:
"In the unstable and rapidly evolving scene the only available means of mitigating the potential damages and preserving the lives of the public and officers was to neutralize the driver of the vehicle."
Stevens added that no less-than-lethal options would have been effective to stop the threat.
A Disputed Account
Orta, the only civilian witness, told a different story. He described Martinez as "hesitant" and "scared," and said Martinez "did not mean to hurt an officer." Speaking to Texas Rangers around 4:47 a.m. after the shooting, Orta said Martinez simply didn't want to go to jail.
"It didn't floor it or nothing. It was just slowly moving, and they started shooting."
Orta also told investigators that he and Martinez had been drinking earlier that night. He was seen handcuffed and lying on the ground after the incident. He asked an officer a simple question: "Did I do anything wrong?"
Orta learned during that interview with the Texas Rangers that his childhood friend had died. He himself would be dead within a year, killed in a car crash in February.
The Family's Attorneys Push Back
Attorneys Charles M. Stam and Alex Stamm, representing Martinez's mother, Rachel Reyes, issued a statement sharply disputing the agent's account. They contend the new footage contradicts Stevens' version of events:
"These new videos confirm that Ruben's car was barely moving when he was shot. That he was braking, not accelerating. That nobody was on the hood of his car. That nobody was in front of his car when he was shot. That he was shot at point-blank range through his side window by an ICE agent who was in no danger."
They added that their pursuit of full transparency would continue, noting that the public has yet to see all evidence held by the government.
A separate moment captured in footage shows agents debriefing after the shooting. One agent, believed to be Stevens, described Martinez's vehicle "creeping up" and then accelerating. The tone was casual, profane, and conversational. Officer Emmanuel Salinas, who responded to the scene, described in his police report finding Martinez on the ground surrounded by agents and officers applying first aid and attempting to resuscitate him.
Grand Jury, No Indictment, No Closure
A Texas grand jury reviewed the evidence and declined to indict Stevens. For prosecutors, the legal question was whether Stevens reasonably believed deadly force was necessary to prevent death or serious injury to himself, Agent Sosa, other officers, and nearby pedestrians. The grand jury said yes, or at least declined to say no.
That decision will satisfy no one who watches the footage and sees ambiguity rather than clarity. The attorneys' claims about braking versus accelerating, about whether anyone was actually on the hood, remain assertions. But they are assertions that at least some of the released footage appears to complicate rather than resolve.
This is not a story that fits neatly into the usual categories. Conservatives rightly support law enforcement and the men and women who put themselves in danger every night on streets like those in South Padre Island. Supporting the mission of immigration enforcement does not require pretending that every use of force by every agent is beyond question. Martinez was an American citizen. He was not the subject of an immigration operation. He was at the scene of a car accident.
Evidence logs reference a plastic bag with alleged marijuana and a can allegedly used as an ashtray for the drug. None of that justifies lethal force, and no one has claimed it does. But its presence in the evidence file is a reminder that these situations are messy, that the people involved are complicated, and that the facts rarely arrange themselves into the clean narratives that lawyers and journalists prefer.
What's Still Missing
The most glaring gap in the record is the absence of body camera footage from the HSI agents themselves. Stevens and Sosa were the two people closest to the shooting. Whether they were wearing cameras, whether those cameras were recording, whether that footage exists and is being withheld: none of that is answered by what has been released so far.
Newsweek first connected ICE agents to Martinez's death through a FOIA request by American Oversight seeking documents on use-of-force incidents. The outlet reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment. As of the report, no response had been provided.
Over 160 pieces of evidence are now public. The grand jury has spoken. The only civilian witness is dead. And a 23-year-old American citizen's family is still waiting for someone to explain, with footage that matches the explanation, why their son had to die on a sidewalk in South Padre Island.
