Inset: Nathan Martinez (Bexar County Sheriff's Office). Background: The street where Martinez shot and killed a teenager in San Antonio, Texas (Google Maps).
A Texas man will spend over seven decades behind bars for killing a teenager who was having morning coffee with his mother.
Earlier this month, Nathan Martinez, 22, was convicted by a jury of his peers in Bexar County on one count of murder over the drive-by shooting death of 17-year-old Julian Junior Robledo.
This week, the defendant was sentenced to 75 years in prison by 187th District Court Judge Stephanie Boyd.
The incident occurred around 9 a.m. on Aug. 15, 2023, when Robledo was sitting outside underneath a carport with his mother and his 1-month-old child at their home on Mosscircle Drive in San Antonio.
Moments later, a car briefly paused on the road, just near the family's mailbox. Then a fusillade of bullets struck the house.
"I was having my morning coffee," the victim's mother told San Antonio-based CBS affiliate KENS. "My son got here and sat next to me. I saw a car come by twice. The second time, it fired shots at us."
Martinez had opened fire from that passing car, unleashing 16 rounds in a rapid discharge from a 9 mm equipped with a so-called "Glock switch," a modification device — not actually produced by Glock Inc. — which illegally allows a semi-automatic weapon to be converted into a fully automatic weapon, according to prosecutors, KENS reported.
"I ran back towards the little alley," the grieving mother went on. "When I turned around, I saw my son was shot. I was in shock when I saw him. I touched him with my hand, I didn't know where he was shot. I touched his head."
The victim was rushed to a nearby hospital but he succumbed to his wounds two days later. Robledo died on the nine-year anniversary of his father's death, family members told the TV station.
Law enforcement later found a series of text messages which they said showed "hostility" between the shooter and the victim. Authorities also found posts in which Martinez bragged about "taking down" someone with the modified firearm.
At the scene of the crime, investigators linked shell casings to a firearm found in the same vehicle as Martinez.
The defendant was arrested in October 2023 after trying to evade detection as police — called about a suspicious vehicle — came upon the driver of a car trying to discard the weapon, the San Antonio Express-News reported. Martinez was a passenger in that car.
As it turned out, that same gun that was used to kill Robledo was linked to another drive-by-shooting. In that earlier incident, Martinez would eventually plead guilty to murder charges over the deaths of Juan Gomez and Alejandro Gomez-Solis during a Father's Day barbecue.
The defendant was previously sentenced to 75 years in prison for those earlier murders. The latest sentence was assessed to run concurrently, or at the same time as the earlier 75-year sentence.