An ex-border patrol agent in Texas, USA, who was arrested on the 7th of December for the deaths of four sex workers in 2018 has been found guilty capital murder after a nearly two-week trial.
The man, known as David Ortiz, was reported to have targeted sex workers, as he confessed that they were paid and then eventually killed by him, according to The New York Times.
The victims, who were murdered, were identified as Janelle Ortiz, Melissa Ramirez, Guiselda Alicia Cantu, and Claudine Anne Luera.
A San Antonio jury listened to the recording of Ortiz’s confession, where he explained to the investigators that he paid sex workers for sex and eventually killed them.
Read Also: 35 year old sex worker tired of living a lie
“Former U.S. Border Patrol supervisor Juan David Ortiz reacts as recorder jail phone calls to his wife, Daniella, are played outside the presence of the jury during his capital murder trial at the Cadena-Reeves Justice Center in San Antonio, Texas”. (Jerry Lara/The San Antonio Express-News via AP)
I wanted to clean up the streets. These people… are dirt, and I was going to get rid of them. Law enforcement doesn’t do anything about them? “I will, and I am sick of them,” Ortiz stated during the confession.
According to AP news, a woman named Erik Pena managed to escape from the hands of Ortiz as he had a gun pointed at her head.
Pena claimed that as she fled from the vehicle, her blouse ripped, forcing her to run topless to a state trooper at a nearby gas station to report Ortiz, who then fled from the scene. “He was found and arrested the next morning,” the article stated.
After several appearances in court, Ortiz was eventually sentenced to life in prison without any possibility of parole.
