CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx — The driver who crashed into a police officer directing traffic for a funeral procession earlier this year will not face criminal charges.
In May, Corpus Christi Police Senior Officer Vicente Ortiz sustained life-threatening injuries from that crash and died ten days later.
The woman who caused the accident was cited with failure to yield.
Corpus Christi Police Captain Timothy Frazier told KRIS 6 News that the department turned over its investigation to the Nueces County District Attorney three weeks after the crash. That office later determined no criminal charges would be filed.
KRIS 6 News has received multiple questions about the events leading up to this crash, so it began digging for answers.
On June 18, KRIS 6 submitted a Public Information Request, which the city then sent to the Texas Attorney General (AG), seeking an opinion on whether it could be withheld.
However, the department failed to notify KRIS 6 that it had sought an opinion, violating the Public Information Act. In response, 6 Investigates filed its own response with the AG, who ruled in favor of KRIS 6 and ordered the police department to release the report.
That 203-page report shines light on the events that led to the death of Ortiz, a 15-year veteran of the department, including the driver's effort to blame someone else.
Most importantly, that report details the accounts of people who put their own lives at risk to help Ortiz and other officers, so that they could tend to the fallen officer.
TIMELINE
According to the police report, just after 1:30 p.m. May 21, the woman who hit Ortiz, had just left her home with her one-year-old son to pick up another child from school. She lived three blocks away from the site of the crash.
Around the same time, Ortiz was one of three motorcycle officers escorting a funeral procession from Ss. Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church to the Coastal Bend Veterans Cemetery.
Ortiz took the lead in the procession, which consisted of about 30 to 40 cars. That procession was heading down Kostoryz Road and came to a standstill after the hearse stopped at a red light on Kostoryz Road.
A driver in the procession left a gap between him and the car in front of him. According to witnesses, the woman cited for failure to yield, who was driving a GMC Terrain, cut in front of that driver.
Witnesses said, as she turned left, she saw Ortiz approaching in the inside lane. She applied her brakes but hit Ortiz.
According to witnesses, Officer Ortiz had his emergency lights and sirens on but the woman said she didn't see him coming.
The second officer leading the procession, Officer Robert Alvarado told investigators Ortiz flew 10 to 12 feet in the air and landed on his stomach, one to two feet in front of the SUV.
Alvarado rushed to Ortiz's side as people in the procession got out of their cars to check on Ortiz.
Alvarado said that's when the woman said, "They waved me through the intersection. They said I could go."
Soon after, two nurses in the funeral procession got out of their vehicles to help, They told Ortiz not to move and took care of him until medics arrived.
Two other people gathered some of Ortiz's items from the roadway, including a magazine, a taser, and a cell phone.
Then, a man in a military uniform approached Officer Alvarado, who said he was in the Army, and began directing traffic. This allowed Alvarado to tend to the injured officer.
One of the first officers who arrived at the scene was Officer E. Reyes. According to the incident report, he found Ortiz lying on the ground moaning and groaning and asked that no one touch him due to the amount of pain he was in. Ortiz appeared to have a broken left arm and wrist and he said his back was hurting. Officer Reyes stayed behind with some civilians who stopped to help render aid until medics could arrive.
That officer then found a woman who said she was at the car wash when she heard police sirens. When she turned around to see what was going on, she saw three motorcycle officers escorting a funeral procession. She said not even seconds later, she saw the GMC Terrain cut through the procession and hit Ortiz, sending him airborne.
According to the report, Ortiz's gun magazine had broken apart, resulting in bullets across the roadway. At least one bullet was found inside of the bumper on the GMC Terrain.
At that point, Ortiz was rushed to Christus Spohn Hospital Shoreline.
Moments later, another officer arrived and found a surveillance camera at the Minit Man Oil Change near the crash site. The camera captured the collision and its impact. He also found a city-owned camera nearby that also captured the incident.
When the third motorcycle officer, Senior Officer R. Hollum, arrived at the scene, he found a driver in the procession telling a woman holding a small child that funeral processions have the right of way and that she shouldn't have driven through it. The woman said, "she was just trying to get to her son's school".
She later told officers the driver of the car that left the gap on Kostoryz motioned her to go through and she didn't see Ortiz approaching.
Officers questioned the man who created the gap on Kostoryz Road. He told officers the woman stopped at the stop sign as the procession passed. When the procession stopped, she cut in front of him but he never waved her vehicle through.
He would have celebrated his 45th birthday on October 9.
