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BROWNSVILLE — Jurors on Tuesday morning watched a heart-wrenching body cam video as San Benito police officers pulled one of their own out of his patrol unit, placed him into the bed of a Border Patrol truck and rushed the dying man to Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen.
The testimony came from two San Benito police officers on the second day of trial, who were the first to find San Benito police Lt. Milton Resendez slumped over behind the wheel of his patrol car.
And Resendez was not supposed to be on the street that night.
Rogelio Martinez, 20, is accused of killing Resendez on Oct. 17, 2023, following a chase that extended from South Padre Island to Brownsville to San Benito. Resendez, a 27-year veteran of the agency, was shot in San Benito.
Martinez is charged with capital murder of a peace officer and six counts of attempted capital murder of a peace officer as well as two counts of evading arrest.
Should he be convicted, prosecutors will seek the death penalty.
Martinez was 18 at the time of the shooting and has pleaded not guilty.
His co-defendant, 26-year-old Mexican national Rodrigo Axel Espinosa Valdez, previously pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of murder and is expected to testify when testimony begins in the trial.
Martinez has pleaded not guilty.
The first witness on Tuesday was San Benito police Officer Edward Trevino.
Resendez was his supervisor on the night of the shooting and was supposed to remain at the station.
Right before 11 p.m., Trevino heard about the second pursuit heading toward San Benito on the expressway from the mall in Brownsville, where he heard officers reporting shots fired over the radio.
Around this time, Trevino saw Resendez leave the station.
He called Resendez and told him he had a bad feeling.
Resendez told him he wanted to see what was happening.
“I just had a bad feeling something was going to happen. I called him and minutes later, everything happened. … He didn’t have to leave the station,” Trevino said.
Around this time Resendez called over his radio and said, “I’m hit,” Trevino recalled from the witness stand.
“The way he said it on the radio was horrible … something was really, really wrong,” he said.
Those were the last words Resendez said over the radio.
Trevino was the first officer to find Resendez, who was slumped over the wheel in his patrol car and bleeding.
“He wasn’t reacting to anything … it just looked like he was asleep,” Trevino said.
Body cam played for the jury showed Trevino banging on the window and screaming, “Milton!”
The next witness was San Benito police Det. Mario Valdez Jr.
Valdez, along with Border Patrol agents, assisted Trevino in smashing the windows in Resendez’s patrol vehicle, which was locked from the inside, then they placed him in the bed of a Border Patrol truck and rushed him to the hospital.
The jury saw Valdez’s body camera of the entire ordeal.
The tone of Valdez’s voice that night was one of adrenaline, fear, disbelief and terror for what happened to Resendez.
That video also shows the Border Patrol truck arriving in the emergency bay of the hospital, where EMS and law enforcement remove Resendez from the bed and place him on a stretcher where a medic immediately begins performing CPR.
“Stay with us, Lt. Come on, you are here … stay with us, Lt. Stay with us, Lt.,” Valdez could be heard saying.
Martinez, meanwhile, showed no visible reaction to the video of Resendez being rushed to the hospital and being taken in for emergency medical care.
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Accused San Benito cop killer sees first day in death penalty trial