An Odessa man accused of kidnapping the mother of his child and holding her hostage for several hours last year was convicted by an Ector County jury Wednesday. He was also convicted of threatening her brother with a gun hours before the kidnapping.
The jury, which took just 30 minutes to render its verdict, must now decide how much prison time Nathan Sandoval, 25, should serve. He’s facing 25 years to life for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and aggravated kidnapping with a deadly weapon. The sentences will run concurrently.
According to testimony in the 244th Ector County District Court this week, Nathan Sandoval impregnated Abigail Leyva when he was 20 and she was 15 and they broke up two years later while he was incarcerated.
Assistant Ector County District Attorneys Kevin Schulz and Henry Eckels told jurors Sandoval desperately wanted to reunite with Leyva and their daughter and kidnapped Leyva when she refused to speak with him.
Leyva’s brother, Edward, testified an armed Sandoval came to his Tanglewood Lane apartment in March 2021 demanding to know where Leyva was and refused to leave. Edward Leyva and his former girlfriend, Alexia Estrada, told jurors Sandoval pointed the gun at them at least once that night.
Leyva testified she broke up with Sandoval because he’d grown into a hateful and violent person. At the time of the kidnapping, their daughter was living with Sandoval’s mother while she worked two jobs hoping to make a home for herself and their daughter.
She was waitressing in Midland and working as a dancer at Jaguar’s, an adult entertainment club, when she began getting texts from Sandoval expressing his anger at her for not speaking with him and for working at Jaguar’s.
Schulz and Leyva read each of the texts to the jury. Sandoval made it clear he’d been stalking her and said she’d see what would happen if she returned to Jaguar’s.
“Not even the popo can save you,” Sandoval wrote, apparently referring to the police.
In another text he said something would happen to the people she loved if she continued to strip and in another, “Haven’t you buried enough of your family already?”
In a Facebook message he wrote, “I can make this all go away if you talk to me.”
Thirty-six hours after the incident with her brother and hours after the Facebook message, Leyva said Sandoval showed up outside her brother’s apartment while she was sitting in a rental car. She testified he shot out the driver’s side window to get inside the car and took her to West Odessa. They sat hidden behind a building on Hubnik Road for five hours until Sandoval heard a helicopter overheard, got scared and ran, she said.
During those hours, Leyva testified Sandoval kept the gun on his lap and she tried to be nice to him because she was afraid he’d shoot her.
“I thought I was going to die. I was terrified for my life,” Leyva said.
It was also for that reason she told an Odessa Police Department crisis negotiator who called Sandoval shortly after she was taken that she was OK, Leyva said.
After Sandoval ran away, she got a ride back to her brother’s apartment from strangers she found on the nearby service road.
Prosecutors also put Estrada, Leyva’s mother and a neighbor on the stand, all of whom testified about watching Sandoval kidnap Leyva. Jurors also heard from the crime scene technician who found broken glass and a bullet casing at the scene, the crisis negotiator, an OPD corporal who found the car, the officer who chased and arrested Sandoval a month after the kidnapping and the detective who interviewed Sandoval on camera.
Sandoval told detective and crisis negotiator Holly Hughes Leyva accidentally kicked out the window when she was moving from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat, that everything was “cool” and his mom would drive her home when they were done talking.
Sandoval told the detective Leyva shot out the window with a pink revolver and everyone was making a bigger deal out of the incident than it really was. He said he wasn’t upset with Leyva that day, he was just hurt she’d left him and was stripping.
Sandoval also offered to identify a suspect in an unrelated shooting if the detective could get the “aggravated” part of his charges dismissed.
During closing arguments, defense attorney Johanna Curry said the state had failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. She suggested to jurors that Leyva and her family conspired against Sandoval and pointed out some inconsistencies in their stories.
Curry argued the state couldn’t prove the car had been shot that day, that the shell casing found at the scene was related to the case or even that Sandoval was at the apartment complex or in the car that day.
She even suggested Hughes, the crisis negotiator, wasn’t really talking to Sandoval on the phone that day. She didn’t know him and wouldn’t recognize his voice, Curry said.
During his closing argument, Schulz pointed out the inconsistencies in Sandoval’s stories. He noted most of the glass from the broken window fell inside the car, not outside, which corroborated Leyva’s story and he also pointed out revolvers don’t eject shells. He also reminded jurors there’s evidence the bullet traveled through a passenger door speaker and out the door.
The detectives couldn’t link Sandoval to a gun because they never found it, he said.
The witnesses’ stories would be suspicious if they matched; they differ because they came from different perspectives, Schulz said.
The neighbor had no reason to lie and if Leyva’s mother was lying during her 911 call, she deserves an Academy Award, Schulz said.
Schulz also urged jurors to compare Sandoval’s voice during his interviews with the two detectives to that of the voice on a video Leyva received shortly before Sandoval was arrested.
Leyva identified Sandoval as the man in the video wearing a Day of the Dead mask waving a gun around and saying he was losing his patience with her, which she took as a threat.
If Sandoval wasn’t guilty, why then did he try to make a deal for a less serious charge during his interrogation? Schulz asked.
There’s no telling what Sandoval will do if allowed to walk free, Schulz said.
“Nothing will stop him but you,” Schulz told the jurors.
