Jurors in the trial of a 25-year-old man accused of purposely running down a teenager with his truck last year heard from both the teen and the defendant Wednesday.
Homero Villa Aguilar is facing one count of injury to a child, a Class 1 felony punishable by up to 99 years in prison.
On Wednesday afternoon, Homero Carreón Jr., 15, testified that on April 18, 2021, he’d spent the day on his family’s property on South Blackfoot Avenue in West Odessa tending to their roosters, hens, horses and other animals.
That evening, Carreón said he and his father, Homero Sr., went to visit his godfather, Octavio Rodriguez, for a barbecue near North Moss Avenue and West Third Street. After getting home, his father asked him to turn out the light in their stable and when he was done he heard Aguilar, his sister’s common-law husband, yelling from the travel trailer they lived in.
When he stepped inside, Carreón testified he saw the bathroom door was broken, a pot was on the ground and his sister, Layza, was crying. She told him Aguilar had hit her.
A short time later, Carreón decided to walk to his house a short distance away on the same property, leaving Layza in the travel trailer with their mother, Mercedez, and his 3-year-old niece, Mialeyza.
As he started to head home, he heard Aguilar’s truck suddenly accelerate and the next thing he knew, he was being hit by it.
“It hit my left leg and I bounced against the RV,” Carreón said.
Aguilar, who hit the RV with the truck as well, threw the truck into reverse and as he tried to run away, Aguilar struck him again, this time pinning him against the RV, Carreón said. Aguilar then fled the scene.
He remembers screaming in pain and realizing he couldn’t feel his legs, Carreón said. His mother sat down beside him, telling him to calm down and an ambulance was on the way.
He doesn’t remember much about the trip to the hospitals here in Odessa or in Lubbock, other than the road to Lubbock was a “bouncy” one and he was in terrible pain until “everything went black,” Carreón said.
The teen said he doesn’t remember how many surgeries he’s had, but he now wears a colostomy bag and skin from his back was grafted onto the backs of his thighs. He spent months in the hospital hooked up to IVs, a feeding tube and a catheter and he couldn’t walk for two months.
Carreón testified he had to go through physical therapy and remains in counseling. He’s thought of committing suicide “plenty of times,” he told Assistant Ector District Attorney Kevin Schulz.
The teenager, who only appeared to cry when talking about his colostomy, showed jurors the bag and the scars on his back.
Carreón told Aguilar’s defense attorney, Israel Guardiola, he never saw Aguilar act violently toward anyone before that night and Aguilar got along well with everyone in his family.
Aguilar testified through a Spanish-speaking interpreter he dated Layza Carreón for about a year and he lived with the Carreón family for another five months before he and Layza moved into the RV he purchased two weeks before the incident. He considered Layza to be his wife, he said.
Aguilar testified he spent the evening of the incident with Homer Carreón Sr. and Homer Carreón Jr., near 57th Street, not Moss Avenue and he said they went to watch cockfights, not eat barbecue. Moreover, their host’s last name was Ray, not Rodriguez, he said.
The defendant told jurors he drank somewhere between two and four beers before leaving to pick Layza up from work.
Aguilar testified he wasn’t intoxicated, but Layza was. He told jurors she became upset with him upon learning he’d been to the cockfights and left her daughter with her mother.
They continued to argue after they picked up her daughter and once they got home, but it wasn’t a serious fight and he never got mad, Aguilar said.
Eventually, Aguilar said his in-laws showed up at the RV upset and Mercedez Carreón told him to leave. He remembers pushing on the bedroom door so he could get his clothes and the door ended up leaning as a result.
After taking two loads of clothes out to his truck, Aguilar said he spotted Homero Carreón Jr. out of the corner of his eye standing near the front of the RV with a gun.
Aguilar told jurors he got into his truck and put it in reverse to leave, but his brother-in-law pointed the gun at him, holding it sideways.
“I got scared and I just went forward with the truck. I thought he was going to shoot me,” Aguilar said.
The defendant testified he went to his aunt’s home, but she wasn’t there. Upset and not knowing what to do, Aguilar said he left his truck there and walked several miles to a Pilot where he ended up running into a friend who was heading to Mexico.
They went to Mexico together, but he voluntarily returned several days later after learning from his aunt the police wanted to talk to him. Aguilar testified he didn’t know how badly Homero Jr. was injured until he was arrested.
Investigators testified previously they did not locate a weapon at the scene.
During cross examination from Schulz, Aguilar said his former wife and her parents were liars when they said he was intoxicated and possibly on drugs that night and when Layza said they argued over her refusal to fill out a job application for him.
He also said his former wife lied when she said he broke some lights and smacked her daughter one week prior to the incident. He insisted he never became angry the night of April 18 and he denied breaking down both the bathroom door and the bedroom door that night.
“Why did Mialeyza start crying that night?” Schulz asked Aguilar.
“I don’t remember if she cried or didn’t cry,” Aguilar answered.
“Wasn’t it because you called her a brat?” Schulz asked. “Isn’t that why she ran to the bathroom and you broke the door down?”
When Schulz tried to firm up the details of Aguilar hitting his brother-in-law, Aguilar told the prosecutor he couldn’t remember specifics as far as the distances involved or how Carreón ended up landing where he did.
He continued to insist however, that he hit Carreón in self-defense, that he hit him just once and that he did not pin him against the RV at any point.
Aguilar told Schulz he can’t explain how his brother-in-law got the crush injuries described by a doctor earlier this week.
“It’s something terrible when somebody points a gun at you,” Aguilar said. “I don’t know if I was angry or scared…I just wanted to push him a little bit because I wanted to leave.”
Aguilar also insisted it was just coincidence his friend showed up at the Pilot in his time of need as he lost his cell phone that night.
The defendant acknowledged under cross-examination he never called police to report being threatened by his brother-in-law and he never called his wife or his in-laws to check on his brother-in-law.
Aguilar told his attorney his mother-in-law and his wife never expressed concern about him driving earlier that night despite testifying they thought he was drunk or high.
He returned to Odessa “because I don’t feel I’m guilty. What I did was defend my life,” he told Guardiola.
The defense is expected to wrap up its case Thursday morning.
Judge James Rush of the 244th Ector County District Court is presiding over the trial.
