Gunshots awoke neighbors

Mary Brady happened to be up using the bathroom about 4 a.m. Sunday when the chaos broke out. She heard up to eight shotgun blasts just outside her West Odessa home. Then a truck peeled out and the screaming began.

“You look over there and you can’t help but remember everything that’s happened,” Brady said Monday, recalling the fatal shooting that killed one local teenager and wounded four others in front of her home on West 26th Street. Brady, 40, has lived in the neighborhood for most of her life and said nothing like this has ever happened.

“We’re never going to feel as safe again,” she said.

A day after the gory shooting, new details emerged about the first homicide of the year in Ector County. Neighbors and witnesses, in interviews, shed further light on the emotions of the victims and the response from law enforcement officers, who eventually arrested two suspects after a high-speed chase that ended in a crash on 56th Street.

But many questions remained unanswered.

Authorities declined to release the names of the surviving victims or say whether they were related. They also declined to say whether any suspects remain at large. Ector County sheriff’s officials also acknowledged it could be several days before they determine a motive for the violence.

“Any time you’re dealing with this many people and this many witnesses, nothing’s been ruled out,” Capt. Billy Clark said. 

Bond was set Monday for the two men charged in connection with the shooting. Sunny Hignojos, 20, is charged with murder and evading in a vehicle. He was being held Monday in the Ector County Detention Center on bonds totaling $260,000. Rafael Alvarez Jr., 20, charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, is being held in the same facility on a $50,000 bond.

The shooting happened just before 4 a.m. in the 6200 block of West 26th Street. Brady, the woman who lives across the street, said the occupants of the mobile home moved in last summer and are still the newest residents on a relatively quiet block. She said they often host parties and gatherings that become loud enough for her to complain to the authorities.

But on Sunday, it was the screaming and ringing gunfire that prompted her to call 911. When Brady opened her front door, she said she saw six to eight people crowding around Morales, who was lying in the dirt a few feet from the front of the mobile home.

Two ambulances arrived and left quickly, Brady said. She said Morales appeared to be alive but severely injured. Brady’s brother, Jeff Brady said he recalls a young man screaming at the top of lungs to sheriff’s officials to save his brother. Mary Brady said the screams were so loud that a 9-1-1 operator could hear them through the phone.

Authorities said Morales died in the operating room at Medical Center Hospital.

Brady said several people at the scene had blood all over their clothing, including one man who walked to an ambulance unassisted but holding his abdomen. By Monday, three of the four surviving victims had been treated and released, while one victim, a woman, remained hospitalized. Her condition was not released, but Clark said she was doing well enough to speak to investigators Monday.

Meanwhile, authorities said, Alvarez and Hignojos fled in a truck and led sheriff’s deputies on a chase that ended several miles away near the intersection of Angus Street and 56th Street. Sgt. Gary Duesler, a sheriff’s spokesman, said in a news release that the chase ended when the truck struck a guy wire and wrecked.

But Terry Ruiz, who lives a few feet from the scene of the crash, said the vehicle turned over on its side after striking her fence post. She said she watched as emergency personnel extracted one of the suspects from the truck.

She said lawmen scanned a field north of her home on four-wheelers while a Department of Public Safety helicopter circled overhead. Clark, the Ector County sheriff’s investigator, said one of the suspects fled the vehicle on foot, running through mesquite before he was detained.

On Monday, a large red stain remained on the road in front of Ruiz’ home on 56th Street. Ruiz said she thought the stain was blood from where the truck tipped over near the driver’s side window. Clark said the Alvarez sustained a minor cut to his chin and that the stains were more likely to be fluid from the overturned truck.

No one answered the door Monday afternoon at the mobile home on West 26th Street where the shooting happened. But there seemed to be little doubt regarding the origin of the red spatter stains covering the concrete steps and screen door.