SandyMaloneAustin, TX – The man charged with shooting at cars along an interstate in Texas Saturday may be an illegal immigrant.
Rolando Martinez fired shots along an 18-mile stretch of Interstate 35 on the morning of Nov. 5, hitting four people, including a seven-year-old girl, according to KXAN.
Martinez, 25, was charged with four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and one count of injury to a child.
He is being held in the Travis County Jail in lieu of $1 million bail, and is under an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer, the Austin American-Statesman said.
Court records said Martinez told police he’d been out drinking at a nightclub and was drunk at the time.
Martinez said he didn’t remember much, except waking up on a median strip near the freeway, police said.
For about 90 minutes early Saturday morning, Martinez took shots at numerous people from his black vehicle.
Police said 911 calls came in one after the other, reporting various crime scenes along an 18-mile stretch of roadway.
Around 3:10 a.m. a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper found an abandoned vehicle near I-35, and saw a man run away from the scene, KXAN reported.
Police later found a gun in that car, and more than 15 scattered shells that made it appear that the rifle had been shot out of both the passenger and driver’s side windows, an affidavit said.
KXAN reported police tracked the license plate data from the car back to Martinez, and later arrested him at his home.
Records show Martinez has been arrested before.
Martinez pleaded guilty to assaulting a public servant in in Travis County in 2016.
The American-Statesman said it was uncIear what his immigration status was at that time of those charges, or whether ICE was involved in that criminal proceeding.