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Couple testifies defendant beaten up
Published July 2, 2009
ANGLETON — Jorge Muniz was driving home with his wife and child when he saw a group of men beating someone on the ground.
“I saw blood on his face,” Muniz said.
When Muniz stopped to see what was going on, the men told him to keep driving, he said.
Muniz didn’t see who the men were beating, but his wife, Cynthia, recognized him as Salvador Rodriguez, the maintenance man for the trailer park where they lived.
“I couldn’t tell how many” were hitting him, she said through an interpreter because she speaks mostly Spanish.
The couple testified Wednesday in Rodriguez’s murder trial.
Prosecutors believe Rodriguez, 60, drove his truck into a crowd at the trailer park in the 3900 block of CR 48 north of Iowa Colony on March 8, 2008. Sergio Mendoza-Villa died at the scene, and four others were injured.
Rodriguez is on trial for one count of murder. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.
The couple testified in Rodriguez’s defense Wednesday, but they could not say if any of the men in the crowd were among those who beat Rodriguez.
“I didn’t see any faces,” Jorge Muniz said.
Prosecutors believe Rodriguez purposefully drove his truck into a crowd of people after any fight that might have happened that night. Rodriguez’s attorney asserts his client drove through the crowd trying to get away from them after he was beaten.
But other witnesses testified Wednesday they saw no such fight before Rodriguez’s truck plowed into the crowd.
One man said he was just joining the group of men standing together at the trailer park and had opened a beer when he heard squealing tires.
“I was there for not even five minutes,” the man said. “I thought he was peeling out because he was mad.”
The screeching tires got louder, and when the man turned around, he saw Rodriguez driving the truck toward the group, he testified.
“I turned back, and that’s when I saw the truck running us over,” he said.
Rodriguez then backed up the truck and hit the crowd again, he said.
The witness was taken to a hospital after his leg was hit by the bumper.
On cross-examination by Rodriguez’s attorney, Michael Garza, the man admitted he drank a lot of alcohol that night before he was hit, and that he refused treatment at the hospital.
Nursing assistant Blanca Rodriguez said she was coming home that night from a movie when she saw Rodriguez’s truck make a U-turn in front of them and headed toward the crowd.
“By the time I looked, everyone had scattered,” said Blanca Rodriguez, who is not related to Salvador Rodriguez. “He came back and hit my truck.”
While Blanca Rodriguez’s husband and daughter went inside their home, she walked toward the crowd to see if she could help. One man was dead by the time she got to them, Blanca Rodriguez said.
“This is a night I’ll never forget,” she said. “Everything was in chaos.”
Both prosecutors and the defense rested their cases Wednesday. Closing arguments are set to begin at 9 a.m. today in District Judge Robert May’s courtroom at the Brazoria County Courthouse.
John Tompkins covers Brazoria County courts for The Facts. Contact him at (979) 849-8581.
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