INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Ortiz's family and friends have fondly described him as an A/B honor roll student and football star.In the earliest hours of the Fourth of
July, Austin police received a 911 call about an escalating argument on the southeast side of the Texas city
A man was pointing a gun at the head of another man in the parking lot of an apartment complex, the caller said.Jason Roche, 41, was
apparently upset that 19-year-old Devonte Ortiz was setting off fireworks with his friends at their apartment complex, according to a copy
of an arrest affidavit provided to The Washington Post.By the time police arrived around 1:30 a.m
Wednesday, it was too late: Ortiz had been shot, authorities said
He was taken to a hospital where he was later pronounced dead.Roche told police he had asked Ortiz and his friends to stop shooting off
fireworks earlier that night, the affidavit stated
When they didn't, Roche said he confronted the group a second time - then shot Ortiz after he said the teenager also reached for a gun,
It was a matter of self-defense.However, police would later review cellphone videos taken at the scene and discovered they told a different
story.In the videos, Roche "is observed displaying a firearm at Ortiz, reholstering the firearm then displaying the firearm multiple times,"
"The video depicts Roche following Ortiz around the car and they argue with each other."Roche's father was also outside, police said, and
Video footage showed Roche's father and Ortiz "engage in a verbal altercation and mutual shoving of each other," resulting in the elder
Roche falling to the ground, the affidavit stated.It was then that Roche shot Ortiz, police said.Ortiz, it turns out, was not armed when he
was shot and was "moving away from the firearm and not lunging toward it as stated by Roche," the affidavit stated.Roche was arrested Friday
and charged with first-degree murder, police said
He is being held at the Travis County Jail on a $250,000 bond, jail records show.Police found a Taurus handgun and a Mossburg AR-15 style
rifle in the parking lot near where the shooting occurred, the affidavit stated
Austin police representatives did not respond to requests for additional information on Saturday.Meanwhile, the shooting has devastated
Ortiz's family and friends, who described the teenager as an A/B honor roll student and football star at William B
Travis High School, from which he had graduated in 2017.On Friday night, several dozen people gathered at the high school to remember Ortiz,
holding red and white balloons and lighting candles as a tribute to the teenager.Amber Garcia, Ortiz's girlfriend, remembered him at the
vigil as "passionate and brave and smart and outgoing," according to KXAN News."Two years wasn't enough," Garcia said, referring to their
relationship, shaking her head and sobbing
"It wasn't enough."In a tearful interview with KVUE News, two of Ortiz's neighbors said the teenager could often be found sitting on the
porch greeting others as they came home and asking how work had gone that day.Though Ortiz had left Blinn College after a couple semesters,
he had come home and gotten jobs so he could be closer to family, his grandmother, Paula Watrous, told reporters Friday."A great young man
A great athlete," Watrous said, according to the Austin American-Statesman
He was very career-minded
In his career, he wanted to be a coach and a teacher
Those are the two things he wanted
But he came home every weekend to be with his family
To be with her family."As of Saturday morning, a GoFundMe set up for Ortiz's family had raised about $5,000
Chas Moore, executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, a nonprofit that has been assisting the Ortiz family with legal arrangements
in the wake of the shooting, said his relatives remained devastated by the "senseless" tragedy."When I heard this story, I was just like,
are you kidding me" Moore told The Post
"[Fireworks on the Fourth of July] is something we all just deal with for like 36 hours
For this guy to be so outraged
