A Marine veteran bent down to pat down a stranger and got shot in the neck.
That stranger had missed court dates and walked free on bond before.
A jury in San Antonio just decided what happens to him now.
A Pat Down for a Weapon Ended With Three Gunshots and a Ruined Voice
A Bexar County jury found Wilmer Vladimir Ortega-Ruiz guilty on three counts of aggravated assault on October 5, 2026, following a week-long trial in San Antonio.
Jimmy Friesenhahn, a fourteen-year United States Marine Corps veteran working as a licensed security guard, was conducting a pat-down at the door of El Patio Sports Bar on Frio City Road in May 2025 when he found a pistol on Ortega-Ruiz.
Ortega-Ruiz shot Friesenhahn three times during the struggle to disarm him, twice into his protective vest and once directly into his neck.
The neck wound caused severe damage to Friesenhahn's spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down and so damaged in his vocal cords that he now speaks only in a whisper.
He has already endured fifteen surgeries, with doctors expecting at least five more.
A blood clot sent him back to the hospital just weeks before trial, threatening to keep him from testifying against the man who paralyzed him.
He made it to the stand anyway.
Friesenhahn told reporters after the verdict: "I'm grateful that I was able to be one of those people."
Four Arrests and Two Skipped Court Dates Came Before the Shooting
Ortega-Ruiz was not a stranger to the Bexar County court system before he shot Friesenhahn.
He was arrested for driving while intoxicated in October 2020, a charge quietly downgraded to obstructing a passageway, and released on his own recognizance before failing to show up for his court date.
In August and again in September 2023, he posted fifteen-hundred-dollar bonds on separate charges and missed both court appearances.
A November 2024 arrest ended with a sentence of time served, clearing him to walk free months before he shot a Marine veteran in the neck.
Federal law enforcement sources say he reached the United States in the first place without ever being stopped at the border.
He was also tied to a separate assault investigation after his girlfriend accused him of attacking her, an incident he fled before anyone could arrest him for it.
Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales, a Democrat, insists Ortega-Ruiz had been sitting under an immigration hold since May 4, 2025, the same month as the shooting, even as the family argues the system still let him remain free in practice long enough to carry a gun into a bar.
Either way, Ortega-Ruiz was free, armed, and inside a crowded sports bar the night everything changed.
Family spokesman Emmanuel Martinez put it bluntly: "…illegal in this country are getting released easier than a normal citizen."
Friesenhahn's sister, Becky Borjon, argued the charge itself undersold the crime, saying flatly: "The intent is murder."
The Fifteen Hundred Dollar Bond System That Keeps Failing Veterans
Ortega-Ruiz now faces up to life in prison on the aggravated assault conviction, plus separate federal charges for illegally possessing a firearm as an alien unlawfully in the country.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already lodged a detainer, meaning Ortega-Ruiz goes into federal custody and faces deportation the moment Texas is finished with him, assuming the system does not lose track of him again.
That last part is not a hypothetical.
This is a defendant who skipped court dates twice, got a drunk driving charge knocked down to a traffic infraction, and still walked the streets of San Antonio long enough to carry a loaded gun into a sports bar.
Federal prosecutors have separately charged him as an illegal alien in possession of a firearm, a charge that exists specifically because he should never have had a weapon on him in the first place.
San Antonio juries do not get to fix a broken bond system.
Friesenhahn's family has raised more than eighty-three thousand dollars through a GoFundMe to cover a lifetime of care no bond schedule can ever repay.
A Marine who served his country for fourteen years now spends his days in a wheelchair because Bexar County kept giving a repeat offender one more chance.
Sources:
- Breitbart, "Texas Jury Convicts Honduran Criminal Alien Who Shot Marine Veteran Security Guard at Sports Bar," Breitbart, October 5, 2026.
- Fox News, "Family: Marine Veteran Allegedly Shot by Illegal Migrant Slams Dem DA's Soft Crime Approach," Fox News, June 15, 2025.
- Fox News, "Family of Paralyzed Marine Vet Allegedly Shot by Migrant Speaks Out as Health Issue Could Delay Testimony," Fox News, September 25, 2026.
- Daily Wire, "Marine Vet Speaks Out After Being Shot and Paralyzed by Illegal Immigrant Suspect With Prior Arrests," Daily Wire, December 17, 2025.
- Daily Wire, "Exclusive: Marine Veteran Paralyzed by Illegal Immigrant Speaks Out as Shooter Faces Life," Daily Wire, 2026.
