A 22-year-old man held at the Lubbock County jail since February 2025 no longer faces a murder charge in connection with a deadly shooting at a quinceañera at a north Lubbock venue.
Joe Angel Martinez appeared Wednesday, Sept. 16, in the 364th District Court where Judge William Eichman granted a Lubbock County District Attorney's Office motion to dismiss the murder charge against Martinez in the Feb. 15, 2025 shooting death of 36-year-old Adam Hernandez was dismissed.
However, Martinez, who has been held at the Lubbock County Detention Center since his Feb. 22, 2025, arrest was sentenced to six years in prison after he pleaded guilty to a second-degree felony count of possession of between 4-200 grams of methamphetamine.
Martinez's attorney, Kris
Espino, said he was pleased with the dismissal of the murder charge.
"I'm happy for Joe and his family and the way it all worked out for them but any time you have the loss of life, of course, you feel terrible for that person and his family as well," he said.
However, he said he didn't believe the murder charge against Martinez should have been presented for indictment in the first place.
"Joe followed the laws of the State of Texas in protecting himself and everyone else who was in that parking lot against someone who turned the SUV into a missile," he said.
Investigating a deadly shooting at a Lubbock party
Martinez's murder charge stemmed from a Lubbock Metropolitan Special Crimes Unit investigation that began after police officers responded about 11:20 p.m. to a shots fired call at Niki Rae's Ballroom in the 1200 block of Jarvis Street where a fight was in progress.
A responding officer was flagged down by a blood-soaked Larry Moreno at a parking lot in the 1000 block of North Avenue Q, which was across the street from the ballroom.
Moreno, who was suffering from a gunshot wound, directed the officer to a black Cadillac Escalade where Hernandez sat in the front passenger seat, also suffering a gunshot wound.
Hernandez was pronounced dead at the scene, while Moreno was taken by ambulance to University Medical Center for treatment.
Investigators learned that Moreno and Hernandez were at the ballroom and were part of two groups who began fighting. The fight spilled out into the parking lot and Moreno and Hernandez fled into the Escalade in the parking lot, according to a probable cause affidavit filed with Martinez's arrest warrant.
Moreno re-entered the parking lot, narrowly missing people and unknown gunmen shot at the vehicle when it stopped, the affidavit states.
Investigators obtained security camera video from the ballroom, which led them to identify Martinez as one of the gunmen that night, according to court documents.
The search for Martinez led them on Feb. 18, 2025, to a home in the 800 block of East Fordham Street where they found him and the drugs that resulted in his six-year prison sentence.
A search of Martinez's bedroom yielded ammunition, a little more than 2 ounces of marijuana and 6 grams of methamphetamine.
He was arrested on the drug charge and released on bond the next day.
However, investigators obtained a warrant for his arrest three days later for murder.
A Lubbock County grand jury in March 2025 returned an indictment against Martinez alleging he intentionally and knowingly shot and killed Hernandez that night.
However, ahead of a Sept. 28 trial, prosecutors re-presented the case on Sept. 1 to grand jurors, who returned a felony murder indictment, alleging that Martinez killed Hernandez while committing the third-degree felony of discharge firearm, a third-degree felony, by shooting in the direction a vehicle, an act clearly dangerous to human life.
Felony murder and intentional murder are both first-degree felonies that carry a punishment of five years to life in prison.
However, Espino said that during an Oct. 29 bond hearing after his client's arrest, the court heard that after the SUV stopped, Martinez didn't shoot until he saw the vehicle's reverse lights come on.
"(Martinez) saw the vehicle make its first pass, (with) people diving out of the way, including a pregnant woman and other people, who were children, essentially," Espino said. "And then he saw the reverse lights come on after it made its first pass and was of the opinion that there's going to be another attempt and before that could happen, he acted."
Under Texas law, defendants have the presumption of self-defense or defense of a third person if they claim, and can bring forth even a scintilla of evidence, that their use of deadly force was immediately necessary. That means prosecutors would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a reasonable person in the defendant's position would not have acted the same way.
Prosecutor Courtney Boyd said while preparing for the trial multiple factors came to light -- including the dishonesty of witnesses who were with Hernandez that night -- that made it unlikely that the state was going to overcome the presumption that Martinez was justified in shooting the vehicle.
"Our job is to do justice," she said. "Getting a prison sentence on a drug case in this case is justice."
Gabriel Monte is the criminal justice reporter for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in Texas. Have a news tip for him? Email him at gmonte@lubbockonline.com.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Murder charge dismissed for man in deadly Lubbock quinceañera shooting
