The Prosecutors
289. The Wrongful Conviction of Pablo Velez, Jr. Part 1 of 3 -- Friends in Low Places
28 Jan 2025
Who is Pablo Velez Jr. and what is his story?
incalculable because of course what's going to happen when somebody fires a gun is anybody else in the area who hears that who has a gun is automatically going to pull their gun and a lot of times just start shooting
And we're talking Texas. So this actually does happen. This is not, I know because I not only lived here, but I heard cases clerking for judges here. People just literally start pulling out guns and shooting. And there will be, we had cases come before us where like 150 shots were fired because someone heard a shot and it was like some stupid kid firing a gun into the air.
And then a lot of people get hurt, obviously.
Yes, and that's what's going to happen here. At this point, after he fires this gun, two other men who are in the parking lot, they pull out their guns and begin firing just in the general direction of this group. Pan was shot and wounded. Now, at this point, he actually managed to run around 130 yards away.
across the street to a school bus corral, where a whole bunch of school buses are parked, and hid under a bus, which was probably pretty smart of him. Escobar, remember Esteban Escobar Rodriguez, he escapes unwounded. But Emerson... Now, no one had actually seen him get out of the car, but apparently he had. He was shot and killed.
There were at least three shooters involved in all this, and two of them got into a gold Cadillac and drove away. And obviously... A gold vehicle. You know, let me just go ahead and tell you, you know, we always like to give advice to those of you who want to commit crimes. If you're going to commit a crime, do not use a gold car. Do not use a gold gun. Do not use gold things.
Because if you use something gold, people are going to remember you and it's going to lead to you being convicted of a crime later on. In this case, though, has a twist. It turns out that the owner of the gold catalog was Pablo Velez Jr., and a witness to the shooting would pick Pablo out of the lineup as one of the shooters.
And if this is sounding like an open and shut case, maybe we should just go ahead and end now. I will tell you, not so fast, my friends. This case is far more interesting than it initially appears.
So that's it. Like a lot of these shootings in the middle of the night that happen with some sort of disagreement, those are all the facts. So let's start with the timeline. On June 10th, 2004, a resident of the Sandera Briar Grove Apartments witnesses a shooting by a man she describes as Hispanic, six foot one, 230 pounds.
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