May 19—A Gainesville man shot two men in front of Ross Dress for Less in January after he learned one was dating his ex-girlfriend, according to testimony by a Gainesville Police investigator on Friday.
Guillermo Vazquez-Martinez, 43, has been charged with attempted murder in the shootings at the Village Shoppes on Dawsonville Highway.
Glenn Ewing of the Gainesville Police Department said the double shooting resulted from a dispute over a woman.
“When I asked them why this happened, they said it was over a girl,” Ewing said of his interviews with the two victims, Juan Carlos Serrano, 31, and Uriel Ortega, 22, who are brothers-in-law, he added.
The shooting occurred around 6:45 p.m. Jan. 30 by the entrance of Ross Dress For Less, police said.
Vazquez-Martinez has also been charged with aggravated assault against both men, and aggravated battery against Serrano.
Ewing said Serrano was shot “at least five times” with a .38 caliber revolver and had to have his leg amputated. He said the gun wasn’t recovered but that they found unspent .38 caliber rounds at the scene.
Serrano may have taken the worst of shooting, he said, but he was not the intended target.
“Uriel was actually supposed to be the subject of that attack. It just happened to be that Juan Carlos interjected himself in the middle of it and ended up being on the receiving end of the bullets,” he said.
“She said that she used to be in a relationship with Guillermo while they lived in Mexico and when they had come to the United States … she ended up meeting Uriel and started dating Uriel, which upset Guillermo and at some point she started receiving text messages on her phone, veiled threat,” Ewing said of his interviews with the woman.
He said one of the bullets passed through Serrano and struck Ortega in the stomach.
“He didn’t have a hole in his stomach,” he said, but “he had a giant golf ball-sized wound there.”
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Defense attorney Kyle Denslow seized on this piece of testimony in arguing that one of the attempted murder charges should be dropped.
“Based on the testimony, Juan Carlos is being shot, a bullet likely travels through Juan Carlos and strikes Uriel,” he said. “I don’t think that’s criminal attempt to commit murder if it’s an accidental or incidental shooting … so one of these two criminal attempts (to commit murder) should be dismissed.”
Chief Assistant District Attorney Anna Fowler pushed back, saying, “If you point a gun in someone’s direction and fire it, you’re attempting to kill them. … You’re presumed to intend the natural consequences of your actions, and pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger — a natural consequence of that is someone is going to die.”
Although Magistrate Court Judge Mike Heck found reasons to agree with both arguments, he ultimately sided with the prosecution and bound all charges over to Superior Court.
“There was testimony that Guillermo was standing over Juan Carlos and firing at him, which after having put a couple of bullets into him, if there wasn’t intent to murder before that, there was definitely intent to murder at that point in time,” Heck said.
Ewing said Vazquez-Martinez fled to Alabama the night of the shooting, adding that they were able to track his location by pinging his cell phone and that he was later apprehended in Dallas, Texas. Vazquez-Martinez was extradited to Georgia and booked into Hall County Jail on May 3.
When asked how they found out that Vazquez-Martinez was in Texas, Ewing said he was texting the woman and the two men.
Ewing recalled one of Vazquez-Martinez’s texts to Serrano, “Something to the effect of, ‘That wasn’t for you, that was for Uriel.'”
When the defense asked why it took so long to capture Martinez, the prosecution objected that it wasn’t relevant. Judge Heck sustained the objection.
Ewing’s testimony was based on interviews with the woman, the two men and security camera footage from Ross Dress for Less. His interviews with both men were conducted through a translator, he said.
He said he interviewed Serrano in the hospital before he went in for emergency surgery. Denslow questioned Serrano’s state of mind, asking how much blood he had lost and whether he was slurring his words.
Ewing said Serrano was “in a state of shock” but was otherwise lucid and immediately identified Vazquez-Martinez when he was asked who shot him.
Ewing recounted the shooting, saying Vazquez-Martinez pulled up in a dark-colored Mazda van while the two men were walking into Ross Dress for Less, according to security camera footage.
“Guillermo had pulled up and was yelling at Uriel,” he said. “And as Juan and Uriel are walking into the department store, you can see them looking back over their shoulder as if somebody’s addressing them and they’re having this conversation.”
“Eventually, Juan Carlos walks out of the view of the camera to walk over to whoever’s addressing him,” while Uriel stays by the entrance door, he said. A few seconds later, he said, the shooting occurred.
The shooting itself happened off camera, he said.
And while Serrano was on the ground, he said, Vazquez-Martinez’s son, Iran Guillermo Vazquez Ayala, got out of the passenger seat of the van and started beating Serrano in the legs with a red metal pipe, which they found at the scene, he added.
“Iran is beating Juan Carlos while he’s being shot, simultaneously,” he said, adding that the son has an outstanding warrant for his arrest.
Denslow asked whether investigators pulled security camera footage from other nearby businesses and whether any other witnesses were interviewed.
Ewing said there was no other security camera footage to his knowledge and said he didn’t interview any other witnesses himself.
“I didn’t take any (additional witness statements) because I wasn’t there,” he said. “Like I said, I went to the hospital, but you have to go through the report itself to find out if there’s any other witness statements. … I don’t remember seeing any detailed witness statements from anybody else.”