The defendant was 15 at the time of the alleged offense, but the case will now move forward in adult criminal court.
ODESSA, Texas — A judge’s decision to try a 15-year-old as an adult in a December triple homicide has transformed an Odessa juvenile case into an adult capital murder prosecution with life-altering consequences.
The defendant, Damien Gabriel Valdez, is accused of killing Jessica Rodriguez, 39, along with her 9-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter at an Odessa apartment complex on Dec. 9, 2025. The transfer ruling does not decide guilt, but it settles a central procedural fight in the case: whether allegations this severe would remain in juvenile court or move into the adult system. For prosecutors, it clears the way toward grand-jury action. For the defense, it means the case will unfold in a forum with broader public exposure and far higher punitive stakes.
The prosecution’s factual theory is already unusually stark. Investigators say the violence followed the end of a relationship between Valdez and Rodriguez’s 15-year-old daughter. According to police accounts repeated in later reports, Valdez first planned to shoot his former girlfriend outside her school, then abandoned that plan and went to her family’s apartment instead. There, authorities say, he shot the girl’s mother and two younger siblings. Officers responded to the 87th Street Apartments at 8740 Hunter Miller Way at about 5:45 p.m. and found the three victims dead from gunshot wounds. Police said the suspect was arrested about 40 minutes later while walking along Andrews Highway. A handgun was reportedly recovered, though authorities have not publicly explained how it was obtained or who may have had legal control over it before the shooting.
Those allegations help explain why prosecutors pressed to move the case out of juvenile court. Certification hearings in Texas are designed for rare cases in which a judge must weigh whether a minor should be prosecuted as an adult, often with close attention to the seriousness of the offense. Local reports said the hearing in this case took place March 10 before County Court-at-Law Judge Brooke Hendricks in Ector County. The ruling made Valdez publicly identifiable in a way he likely would not have been had the case stayed entirely in juvenile court. It also changed the practical meaning of the charge already associated with the case: capital murder of multiple persons. For a juvenile defendant, the issue was never whether the state could seek death. It could not. The issue was whether the state could seek adult-court punishment, including life imprisonment.
In that sense, the transfer ruling sits at the center of two different stories. One is the homicide investigation itself, which remains focused on motive, planning, access to the weapon and the exact events inside the apartment. The other is the state’s judgment about forum and capacity: whether a defendant who was 15 at the time of the alleged offense should answer those allegations in adult court. Public reporting so far leaves some parts of both stories open. Officials have not said whether the ex-girlfriend was inside the apartment at the time of the shooting. They have not publicly detailed what evidence supports the allegation that a school attack was planned and then abandoned. They have also not said whether any adult could face charges tied to the gun or whether prior warnings reached police or school officials. Those unknowns may matter later, but they did not prevent the state from winning transfer now.
The official language surrounding the case has also reinforced the argument that prosecutors were dealing with an exceptionally grave event. Odessa Police Chief Mike Gerke described the shootings as “deliberate” and called them “a tragic and cowardly act of violence.” Community voices echoed the scale of loss. Jill Miller, whose housing organization owns the apartment complex, said after the adult-certification ruling that the victims “still had a lot of life to live.” Their statements are not legal findings, but they show how the case has been framed publicly: not as a chaotic or accidental episode, but as a targeted attack with deep local impact. That framing likely helped shape the public understanding of why an adult transfer was being sought in the first place.
What comes next is more conventional in criminal procedure, even if the case itself is not. Prosecutors have said the matter would proceed to a grand jury. If indicted, the case will move through adult-court arraignment and pretrial litigation, where attorneys will likely test statements, evidence collection, the weapon trail and the prosecution’s account of premeditation. Because the defendant was under 18 at the time of the alleged offense, the legal ceiling remains life in prison rather than death. But that still places the case among the most serious juvenile-transfer prosecutions a Texas court can handle. The move to adult court did not end the hardest questions in the case. It simply decided where those questions will now be fought.
Valdez’s case now stands at the point where juvenile confidentiality has given way to adult criminal process. The next milestone is expected to be grand-jury review, followed by the first formal adult-court steps if the charge is returned.
Author note: Last updated April 7, 2026.