Prosecutors say the 15-year-old abandoned a plan to shoot his ex-girlfriend at school and instead targeted her home.

ODESSA, Texas — A 15-year-old accused of killing his ex-girlfriend’s mother and two younger siblings in a December shooting in Odessa will be tried as an adult, moving one of West Texas’ most shocking recent homicide cases into the adult court system.

The ruling puts Damien Gabriel Valdez into a more serious stage of prosecution after authorities said the killings were deliberate and tied to a breakup with a 15-year-old girl. Police said Valdez was arrested within about 40 minutes of the shooting on Dec. 9, 2025, and has been held since then while prosecutors sought to transfer the case out of juvenile court. The immediate stakes are no longer whether the case can stay in juvenile court, but how quickly it proceeds toward indictment and trial.

The court action came months after Odessa police said officers were sent to the 87th Street Apartments at 8740 Hunter Miller Way at about 5:45 p.m. on Dec. 9. Inside, officers found three people dead from gunshot wounds: 39-year-old Jessica Rodriguez, her 9-year-old son and her 13-year-old daughter. Police later said the suspect was located walking along Andrews Highway and was taken into custody. In later accounts of the investigation, authorities said the violence followed the end of a teenage relationship. Odessa Police Chief Mike Gerke, speaking after the killings, called the attack “deliberate” and said it was “such a tragic and cowardly act of violence,” language that framed the case early as a targeted act rather than a random shooting.

What prosecutors laid out next gave the case its most disturbing allegation. According to investigators, Valdez first intended to shoot his ex-girlfriend outside her school, then changed course and went to her apartment instead. There, police said, he shot Rodriguez and then the girl’s younger brother and sister before leaving on foot. Authorities have said the ex-girlfriend was 15, but they have not publicly said whether she was inside the apartment when the shooting happened. They also have not publicly explained how the handgun was obtained, who owned it, or whether anyone else had prior warning of the alleged plan. Those unanswered points matter because local reporting after the arrest indicated investigators were still examining whether any other person could face charges related to the gun or to prior knowledge of the alleged threat.

The transfer hearing focused the public case less on what happened inside the apartment and more on where a teenager accused of a crime this severe should be prosecuted. In Texas, hearings like this allow a judge to weigh the seriousness of the offense and other factors before deciding whether a juvenile defendant should face adult proceedings. The result in Ector County was certification for adult court, a step that stripped away the anonymity that usually surrounds juvenile cases and placed Valdez’s name fully into public records. That change also altered the consequences he faces. Because he was under 18 at the time of the killings, a capital murder conviction would not bring the death penalty, but under Texas law it can still carry life in prison.

The community response has kept attention fixed on the victims as much as on the accused. Residents and local housing officials publicly mourned Rodriguez and her children after the shooting. Jill Miller, executive director of the Odessa Housing Corporation and owner of the apartment complex, said after the adult-certification ruling that “every life is worth celebrating” and said the three victims “still had a lot of life to live.” Her remarks echoed the tone set by police in December, when Gerke said the killings were the kind of violence that “really marks a community,” especially during the holiday season. In Odessa, the case quickly became more than a crime brief. It became a civic trauma tied to a family home, a neighborhood apartment complex and a set of victims whose ages made the loss especially hard to absorb.

For now, the legal path is clearer than some of the case facts. Prosecutors have said the matter would go next to a grand jury. At this stage, the public record shows one count of capital murder of multiple persons. Court records and police statements available so far do not publicly answer every major question: whether the former girlfriend had been threatened directly before Dec. 9, whether there had been prior police calls involving the teens, or what evidence investigators will use to support the allegation that the original plan centered on a school shooting. Those points are likely to become clearer only through later charging papers, court hearings or testimony. What is known is that the transfer decision moved the case decisively out of juvenile court and toward the adult criminal process.

The case stands now at a turning point rather than an endpoint. The killings have already been investigated as a targeted act, the suspect has already been identified and certified for adult court, and prosecutors have already signaled the next stop in the process. The next milestone is the grand jury stage, where the allegations will be tested in formal charging papers.

Author note: Last updated April 7, 2026.