Angelica Becerra told jurors Monday she doesn’t remember how many shots were fired that night four years ago, but she does remember her 16-year-old son running toward the shooting.
She also remembers the sporty white car that drove by before the shooting and afterward.
According to Assistant Ector County District Attorney Elizabeth Howard, that sport white car belonged to Pedro Antonio Gomez, 30.
Monday was the first day in Gomez’s aggravated assault trial in the 244th Ector County District Court.
Howard told jurors that on July 21, 2018, Elanie Gunter, Gilbert Carmona and Juan “Charlie” Paez were drinking beer outside Gunter’s home near West Fifth Street and Eidson Avenue south of Floyd Gwin Park when Gomez pulled up in his white Challenger shortly after midnight.
Gomez got out of his car, stood in the middle of the street and urged Paez to come fight him, Howard said.
Shortly thereafter, Gomez’s passenger, later identified as Antonio Herrera, got out of the car and began “shooting indiscriminately at everyone there,” Howard said.
The pair then fled in the Challenger, she said.
Paez, Gunter and Carmona, who all identified Gomez as having been there that night, were shot, Howard said.
While authorities never found the gun, they did find a holster in his car along with .40 caliber ammunition, Howard said.
Gomez is facing three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, which is punishable by two to 20 years in prison on each count.
Becerra testified she was picking up her son from his girlfriend’s grandmother’s house on West Sixth Street the night of the shooting. She was already in the car when the shots rang out and after her son ran toward the shooting, she followed.
She saw the white car she’d seen slowly cruise by moments earlier take off quickly after the shooting, saw people laying on the ground and heard screaming.
Becerra told jurors she tried to help one of the men who had been shot as he lay on the grass next to a white pickup truck.
Her son, Jonathan Aguirre, now 20, testified he thinks he heard seven to 10 shots, but it could have been more. He said he saw a white Challenger with dark stripes speeding away from the area of the shooting roughly five to second seconds afterward.
Jurors also heard two 911 calls placed after the shooting. In both an hysterical woman and a panicked man plead repeatedly for “Charlie” to talk to them and to stay conscious.
Defense attorney Phillip Wildman Jr. waived his opening statement.
Herrera, 31, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury and was sentenced to eight years in prison in February 2019. He’s currently in the Ector County jail and is on Wildman’s witness list.
Judge James Rush is presiding over the trial.
