Midland, TX Shooting: Legal Rights of Victims and Families After the Active Shooter Incident
If you are reading this page, you or someone you love was in Midland when the gunfire started. You heard the shots — maybe forty of them, maybe more. You may have been at Midland Memorial Hospital, waiting for surgery, or waiting for news about someone who was. One person did not come home. Nine others were hurt, four badly enough for the operating room. The shooter is dead. The police have cleared the scene. The news trucks will move on. And you are left with the question that brought you here at two in the morning: what happens now, and who answers for what was done to my family?
We are Attorney911. We are trial lawyers who take Texas cases involving catastrophic injury and wrongful death. We are writing this page for one purpose — to give you, in plain language, everything we know about what the law allows after a shooting like this one, what evidence is already disappearing, and what the next seventy-two hours look like for a family in your position. Nothing here is legal advice for your specific case. It is legal information from a trial team that has spent decades in courtrooms — and if what you read here makes sense, the call is free, the consultation is free, and we do not get paid unless we win.
What Happened in Midland: The Incident We Know About
Here is what public reporting has established so far. A gunman opened fire in Midland, Texas — a city of roughly 140,000 people in the heart of the Permian Basin oil region, about 300 miles west of Dallas. The shooting began in one part of the city and traveled, ending near a veterinary hospital. A witness who works at a body shop next to the closed veterinary clinic reported hearing what sounded like at least forty gunshots, then what sounded like a small explosion. She saw heavily armed police officers rush into the parking lot, some appearing to go inside the building. Video from the scene showed officers pouring out of the back of an armored police vehicle and police deploying robots into the area.
The standoff lasted hours. Midland’s mayor confirmed that authorities used robot and drone footage to verify that the shooter was dead. Police did not immediately say how the suspect died.
Midland Memorial Hospital reported the toll: four people underwent surgery, three were treated and released, and two remained in stable condition. One person was killed. At least nine were injured. The numbers may grow.
This is the same region that lived through the 2019 Odessa-Midland shooting rampage, when a gunman who had been fired from his oil-services job killed seven people and wounded two dozen more, firing at random as he drove between the two cities. That history matters — not just to the community’s grief, but to the legal question of whether this kind of violence was foreseeable to the property owners and businesses along the shooter’s path.
Can You Sue After a Shooter Is Dead? Your Legal Rights in Texas
Yes. The criminal case ended when the shooter died — there is no prosecution, no trial, no prison sentence. But the civil case is a completely separate system, and it did not die with the shooter. Texas law gives victims of violent crime and their families the right to pursue compensation from anyone whose negligence contributed to the harm — and that includes more than just the person who pulled the trigger.
Texas recognizes two parallel claims after a fatal injury. The first is a wrongful death action, which belongs to the surviving family — a spouse, children, and parents — and compensates them for what they lost: the financial support their loved one would have provided, the companionship, the guidance, the shared future that was taken. The second is a survival action, which belongs to the decedent’s estate and captures what the person themselves endured between injury and death — their pain, their fear, their medical expenses, their consciousness of what was happening to them. These are two separate cases with two separate damage calculations, and a family that walks through only one door leaves money on the table.
For the nine who survived, Texas personal injury law allows recovery of past and future medical expenses, lost wages, lost earning capacity, physical pain and suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement, and the cost of future care — including psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, which we will discuss in detail because it is the injury most people underestimate after a shooting.
Texas also allows exemplary damages — what most people call punitive damages — in cases involving gross negligence or willful misconduct. These are subject to a statutory cap that we will explain below, but they are available, and in a case involving a property owner who ignored a known pattern of violent crime on the premises, they can be a powerful lever.
Who Can Be Held Accountable: The Defendant Map
The shooter is dead. His estate may have assets — but in most cases, an individual shooter’s estate is worth a fraction of what the harm demands, and intentional-act exclusions in most insurance policies mean the shooter’s homeowner’s or renter’s insurance will not cover deliberate violence. So the real question is: who else is legally responsible?
Property owners at the shooting locations. Texas law imposes a duty on business-property owners to take reasonable measures to protect their invitees — customers, employees, visitors — against foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. If the shooting occurred at or near a commercial property, the owner of that property may be liable if the violence was foreseeable and the security measures were inadequate. The mobile nature of this shooting — beginning in one area, ending at the veterinary clinic — means there may be multiple premises defendants, each with a different security profile and a different relationship to the danger.
Property management companies. If a separate management company operates the property, it may carry its own contractual and operational duty to maintain safe premises — including security patrols, lighting, access controls, and surveillance. If those duties were inadequately performed given the known crime risk, the management company is a separate defendant.
The shooter’s employer. If discovery reveals that the shooter had a documented history of violence, threats, or mental-health crises known to an employer, that employer can face liability for negligent hiring, retention, or supervision. The 2019 Odessa-Midland shooter was a recently terminated oil-services employee — which makes employment-background discovery critical in any Permian Basin shooting case. We do not yet know whether this shooter had an employment nexus, but the discovery process is designed to find out.
Owners and operators of the veterinary clinic and adjacent body shop. The standoff ended at the closed veterinary clinic. If victims were injured on these properties — or if the shooter used the location as a final position — the owners may face premises-liability questions depending on whether victims were struck there, what security existed, and what role the property’s condition played in the harm.
This is the defendant map. It is not a list of confirmed wrongdoers — it is a list of entities whose legal duties and conduct must be investigated, because the evidence of what they knew and what they did (or failed to do) is what converts a tragedy into a viable civil case.
Negligent Security: When a Property Owner Answers for a Shooter’s Violence
Texas premises liability for negligent security is a common-law doctrine refined through decades of judicial decisions. The core principle: a business that invites the public onto its property owes those visitors a duty to take reasonable measures to protect them against foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. Not every crime triggers this duty — the crime must have been foreseeable, and the owner’s response must have been unreasonable given what they knew or should have known.
Foreseeability is the battleground. It is proven through several channels:
Prior similar crime at or near the property. This is the cornerstone. If police were called to the property repeatedly for assaults, robberies, or other violent incidents, the owner cannot claim the shooting was a freak, unforeseeable event. We build this record through police calls-for-service data, crime-grid analysis, and private security incident logs — many of which are public records obtainable through formal requests, but which can be destroyed on the property owner’s own retention schedule if no one demands them in time.
The neighborhood’s crime profile. Even without prior incidents at the specific property, a documented pattern of violent crime in the surrounding area can establish that a reasonable owner would have recognized the danger and taken steps — better lighting, controlled access, security patrols, surveillance cameras, trained staff.
Conditions on the premises. Broken locks, absent cameras, dark parking areas, unmonitored entrances — each is a security failure that a jury can weigh against the property owner’s claim that it “did everything reasonable.”
Industry standards. The standard of care for commercial-property security is established through industry custom, security-expert testimony, and local crime data — not a fixed code. There is no state-mandated minimum-security requirement for general commercial properties in Texas, which means the standard is proven by what a reasonable owner in that location, with that crime history, would have done. Our security experts inspect each site’s lighting, surveillance, access control, and staffing, then testify to what was required and what was missing.
The mobile nature of this shooting complicates the premises-liability analysis — but it also expands the potential defendant pool. Each location where a victim was struck is a separate premises with its own security profile, its own crime history, and its own duty analysis. A single case may involve multiple premises defendants, each with different insurance and different exposure. Mapping each victim’s injury location to the correct defendant-property is one of the first and most critical tasks in the investigation.
The 2019 Connection: Foreseeability and the Permian Basin’s History of Violence
Midland and neighboring Odessa — about twenty miles east in Ector County — form a combined metropolitan area with a documented history of mass-casualty active-shooter events. In 2019, a gunman who had been fired from his oil-services job killed seven people and wounded twenty-five more, firing at random as he drove between the two cities. That event seared the region. It also created a legal context that did not exist before.
Does the 2019 shooting automatically make every subsequent shooting in the Midland-Odessa area “foreseeable” to every property owner? No. That would be an overstatement of the doctrine, and a defense attorney would demolish it. What the 2019 shooting does is establish that the region has a known history of this specific kind of violence — a mass shooting by a person connected to the oil industry — which, combined with discoverable prior crime at the specific shooting locations, builds the foreseeability predicate.
The legal argument works like this: a property owner in a region that has experienced a mass shooting within the last several years, on a commercial corridor with documented violent crime, who maintained inadequate security measures, cannot credibly claim that a shooting on its premises was unforeseeable. The 2019 event is not the whole argument — it is one piece of a larger foreseeability mosaic that includes the specific property’s crime history, the area’s crime profile, and the security measures (or lack thereof) that were in place.
This is a legal argument for the courtroom, not a guarantee. It must be developed through crime-grid discovery, security-expert inspection, and the deposition testimony of the property owners and their security personnel. But it is a powerful argument, and in Midland County — where the jury pool lived through the 2019 shooting and understands what it means — it resonates.
The Medicine: What a Gunshot Wound Does to a Body — and What It Costs for a Lifetime
We need to talk about what actually happened to the people who were shot, because the defense will spend the entire case trying to minimize it. The four people who underwent surgery at Midland Memorial Hospital did not have “minor” injuries. You do not get exploratory surgery for a minor injury.
The physics of a gunshot wound. A bullet does not just punch a hole. It creates a permanent cavity — the path of the projectile itself — and a temporary cavity, a momentary stretch of surrounding tissue that can be many times the bullet’s diameter. This temporary cavity is what causes damage far beyond the bullet’s path: organs lacerated by the shockwave, blood vessels torn by the stretch, nerves crushed against bone. A bullet that passes through the abdomen can kill the spleen, perforate the bowel, and lacerate the liver in a single trajectory. A bullet that strikes the extremity can shatter the femur, sever the femoral artery, and destroy the sciatic nerve — and the person bleeds to death in minutes if the bleeding is not controlled.
What surgery means. The four surgical patients likely underwent one or more of the following: exploratory laparotomy (opening the abdomen to find and repair damage — bowel resection, splenectomy, liver repair, vascular repair); thoracotomy (opening the chest to repair the lung, relieve cardiac tamponade, or control hemorrhage); vascular repair (reconstructing arteries and veins that were severed by the bullet or the temporary cavity); orthopedic fixation (plates, screws, or intramedullary rods to stabilize shattered bones). Each of these is a major operation under general anesthesia, each carries its own complication profile, and each leaves scars that are permanent.
What comes after. The surgical patients face a recovery measured in months, not days. Bowel resection can mean a temporary or permanent colostomy. Vascular repair can mean lifelong anticoagulation and a risk of thrombosis. Nerve damage can mean a limb that will never work the way it did before — a hand that cannot grip, a leg that cannot bear weight without a brace, a foot that drags. Scars from the bullet wounds and the surgical incisions are permanent and may require revision surgery. Chronic pain — nerve pain, phantom pain, complex regional pain syndrome — can persist for years or for life.
The three treated and released. These victims may have sustained less severe penetrating wounds — through-and-through soft-tissue injuries that did not require surgery, or grazes that were cleaned and dressed. But “treated and released” does not mean “fine.” Gunshot wounds carry a high risk of infection, retained fragments, and delayed complications. A wound that looked minor in the emergency room can develop a deep abscess a week later. A fragment that was “left in place” can migrate into a joint or a nerve sheath months later. These victims need follow-up imaging, wound monitoring, and — critically — psychological evaluation for PTSD.
The two in stable condition. “Stable” means the patient is not currently deteriorating — it does not mean the injury is minor. Stable patients with gunshot wounds may have injuries that are being managed non-operatively: a liver laceration being watched for signs of rebleeding, a pneumothorax being managed with a chest tube, a fracture being held for surgical scheduling. Stability is a holding pattern, not a prognosis.
The lifetime cost. A penetrating gunshot wound to the torso requiring surgery can generate medical bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first hospitalization alone — the ER visit, the surgery, the ICU stay, the imaging, the blood products, the anesthesia, the follow-up. A victim who requires revision surgery, nerve repair, or chronic pain management can see lifetime medical costs climb into seven figures. And that is before the lost wages — weeks or months out of work, or a career in the oil industry that is permanently altered because the person can no longer perform the physical labor the basin demands.
In the Permian Basin, where oil-industry wages are among the highest in the country for skilled workers, the lost-earning-capacity component of a gunshot-wound case can dwarf the medical bills. A roughneck, a wireline operator, a frac-hand, a pump-truck driver — these are people who earn six-figure incomes in the boom years, and a permanent physical limitation can end that earning power for the rest of their working life. A forensic economist projects that loss to present value, and in Midland County, where the jury understands what oil-industry jobs pay, the number is credible and real.
The Injury You Cannot See: PTSD After a Mass Shooting
The most underestimated injury after a mass shooting is the one that does not appear on any X-ray. Post-traumatic stress disorder is not a mood. It is not “being upset.” It is a formal psychiatric diagnosis with eight separate diagnostic criteria, and a person has to meet every one of them to carry the diagnosis.
What PTSD actually is. The DSM-5 — the diagnostic manual that every psychiatrist in the country uses — defines PTSD as requiring: (1) exposure to a traumatic event involving actual or threatened death or serious injury (a mass shooting is the textbook example); (2) intrusive symptoms — nightmares, flashbacks, unwanted memories, physical reactivity to reminders; (3) avoidance — steering clear of the place, the thoughts, the feelings; (4) negative changes in cognition and mood — distorted self-blame, persistent fear, detachment from loved ones, inability to feel positive emotions; (5) alterations in arousal and reactivity — hypervigilance, exaggerated startle, irritability, sleep disturbance, concentration problems; (6) symptoms lasting more than one month; (7) functional impairment — the symptoms actually interfere with work, relationships, or daily life; and (8) the symptoms are not attributable to substance use or another medical condition.
Why a mass shooting is uniquely PTSD-generating. The research is clear: the more severe the trauma, the more prolonged the exposure, and the more the victim’s life was directly threatened, the higher the probability of PTSD. A person who heard forty gunshots, who did not know where the shooter was, who ran or hid or lay on the ground waiting for a bullet — that person was exposed to a level of threat that the brain is not built to process. The amygdala — the brain’s alarm system — fires at a level that overrides the prefrontal cortex’s ability to contextualize the danger. The result is a nervous system that stays in alarm mode long after the shooting stops.
The proof problem. The defense will call it “subjective.” They will say the survivor “looks fine.” They will argue the symptoms are pre-existing or exaggerated. This is the standard defense playbook for invisible injuries — and it is beaten the same way every time: with the medical record. A contemporaneous emergency-room psych note, a first therapy intake within weeks of the shooting, a validated diagnostic instrument like the CAPS-5 or the PCL-5 administered by a treating clinician — these create an objective, dated, medical record of the injury that predates any “litigation motive” accusation. The longer a survivor waits to begin treatment, the harder it is to prove the connection — which is why the first piece of advice we give every shooting victim is to get a psychological evaluation, even if they think they are “handling it.”
The lifetime cost of PTSD treatment. Trauma-focused therapy — cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure, EMDR — is the gold-standard treatment, and it works. But it takes time, it costs money, and for some survivors, it takes years. Medication — SSRIs, prazosin for nightmares — may be needed long-term. A life-care planner prices this out: the weekly therapy sessions, the psychiatric medication management, the potential for inpatient treatment if the symptoms are severe, the cost spread across a projected lifespan. For a young victim, the lifetime cost of PTSD treatment alone can reach into six figures — and that is before the lost earning capacity that comes with a person whose hypervigilance and sleep disruption make it impossible to function in a high-stress, high-risk oilfield job.
Bystander claims. Texas recognizes bystander recovery for emotional distress in certain configurations — a person who witnessed the shooting or its immediate aftermath, who was in the zone of danger, who had a close relationship to a direct victim. These claims are governed by Texas’s bystander recovery framework, and their viability depends on the specific facts of proximity and relationship. If you were there — if you saw it, if you heard it, if you held someone’s hand while they bled — you may have a claim, and it deserves evaluation.
The Evidence Clock: What Disappears in Days, Not Months
This is the section that matters most to your case right now, today, while you are reading this page. Because the evidence that determines whether your case is worth a million dollars or twenty million dollars is already dying — and in some cases, it will be legally erased within weeks.
Surveillance footage from businesses along the shooting route. Every commercial DVR and NVR system has a storage limit. When the hard drive fills, the oldest footage is overwritten automatically. Most commercial systems overwrite on a rolling cycle of seven to thirty days. The businesses along the shooter’s path — the store where the first shots were fired, the parking lot he drove through, the veterinary clinic where the standoff ended, the body shop next door — may have cameras that captured the shooter’s movements, the timing, where each victim was struck, and what security measures were or were not in place. That footage is the single most important evidence in a negligent-security case, and it is being erased right now, automatically, unless someone has sent a formal preservation letter demanding that it be saved.
Police body-worn camera footage, armored-vehicle recordings, and robot/drone footage. The mayor confirmed that authorities used robot and drone footage to confirm the shooter’s death. The police body cameras that responded to the active-shooter call recorded the entire sequence — the approach, the standoff, the scene after the shooter was down. This footage documents the full event, the shooter’s position, the victim locations, and the property conditions. It is subject to the ongoing criminal investigation hold, but it is accessible through the Texas Public Information Act — and the request must be filed promptly to establish a record and prevent the footage from being archived or purged.
911 call recordings and dispatch logs. These establish the timeline: when the first call came in, how long the shooting lasted, when police arrived, what witnesses reported in real time. They may identify additional witnesses and locations that have not yet surfaced in public reporting. These are retained by Midland Police Department dispatch on standard retention schedules — and a preservation letter or subpoena should go out within weeks.
The shooter’s employment records, disciplinary history, mental-health treatment history, and social media accounts. If the shooter had an employer, that employer’s personnel file may reveal a documented history of violence, threats, or mental-health crises that the employer knew about and failed to act on — the foundation of a negligent hiring or retention claim. Social media accounts may contain pre-incident threats or evidence of motive. These records can be deleted, memorialized, or purged per the employer’s retention policies — which is why expedited discovery or preservation letters to employers must go out within days, not months.
Crime-statistics reports and prior-incident records for the shooting locations. This is the cornerstone of foreseeability. Prior violent crime at or near the premises is what converts a tragic but unforeseeable event into a viable negligent-security claim. Police reports are public records but may require formal requests. Private security incident logs at commercial properties — the property owner’s own record of what happened on the property before this shooting — can be destroyed per company policy. The preservation letter to the property owner must demand these logs by name.
Medical records from Midland Memorial Hospital and any transfer facilities. These document injury severity, surgical interventions, complications, prognoses, and future care needs. They are the damages engine for every victim claim. They are HIPAA-protected and require client or representative authorization — and they should be obtained promptly while the records are current and before hospital record-retention cycles expire.
Physical crime-scene evidence. Bullet trajectories, shell-casing locations, property damage — these reconstruct the shooting geometry and identify where each victim was positioned relative to security features like lighting, locks, and barriers. The crime scene will be released by law enforcement after processing. Once released, property owners may remediate and alter conditions — replacing broken glass, repairing damage, changing lighting, adding cameras that were not there before. A prompt scene inspection and photographic documentation by a retained expert is essential before the physical evidence is modified.
The preservation letter. This is the document that freezes evidence before it disappears. It goes to every property owner, every business, every employer, and every government agency that holds evidence relevant to the case. It demands, in writing, that the recipient preserve all surveillance footage, security logs, incident reports, employment records, and physical evidence until the litigation is resolved. Once the letter is on file, destruction of the identified evidence becomes spoliation — and a court can impose sanctions, including an adverse-inference instruction telling the jury to assume the destroyed evidence was as bad as the plaintiff says it was. The preservation letter is the first thing we send. The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
The Insurance Playbook: What the Other Side Does — and How We Counter
If you have been injured in a shooting on commercial property, the property owner’s insurance company has already opened a file. They have already assigned an adjuster. And that adjuster is already working to minimize what the company pays — not because they are evil, but because that is their job. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm before he joined this firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you. Here is what they do — and here is how we counter each play.
Play 1: The “just checking in” call. Within days, someone friendly will call to “see how you’re doing” and ask you to “just tell us what happened” — on a recording that is built to be quoted against you in court. The adjuster is not your friend. The call is not a courtesy. It is a tool designed to get you to say “I’m feeling okay” or “I think I’m getting better” before the full extent of your injuries is known. The counter: Do not give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurance company. Not now, not later, not ever, without your lawyer present. You have no legal obligation to do so. Say nothing beyond “I am represented by counsel” and hang up.
Play 2: The quick settlement check. A check may arrive fast — sometimes within weeks — with a release printed on the back or enclosed with it. The release, once signed, extinguishes your right to sue forever. The check arrives before the surgery results are in, before the PTSD is diagnosed, before the lifetime cost of care is known. The counter: Never sign a release from an insurance company without having it reviewed by a lawyer. A check that looks generous today can be a tiny fraction of what your case is worth once the full medical picture is clear. The adjuster is counting on you to be desperate, scared, and unaware of the true value of your claim.
Play 3: The “you were partly at fault” argument. Texas follows a modified comparative negligence standard with a 51% bar. This means:
Texas applies a modified comparative negligence standard with a 51% bar — a plaintiff more than 50% at fault is barred from recovery, and a plaintiff less than 50% at fault has their recovery reduced by their percentage of fault.
The adjuster will try to pin percentage points on you — arguing you were in an area you should not have been, or that you failed to take cover quickly enough, or that you contributed to your own harm in some way. Every percentage point they assign to you is money subtracted from your recovery. The counter: In a shooting case, this argument is almost always a desperate reach — the person who pulled the trigger is the one at fault, and a victim who is shot while going about their daily life is not contributorily negligent for failing to anticipate a mass shooting. But we take it seriously because the adjuster does, and we build the record that makes it impossible for a jury to assign you any meaningful share.
Play 4: Social media surveillance. The insurance company will monitor your social media. A photograph of you smiling at a family gathering will be presented as “proof” that you are not really injured, that your PTSD is exaggerated, that your physical limitations are fabricated. The counter: Assume everything you post will be shown to a jury. Set your accounts to private. Do not post about the shooting, your injuries, your medical treatment, your emotional state, or your activities. Do not let friends tag you in posts. Your lawyer will give you specific guidance — but the general rule is silence.
Play 5: The independent medical examination (IME). The insurance company will send you to a doctor of their choosing for an “independent” evaluation. The doctor is not independent — they are paid by the insurance company, and they know that their future referrals depend on producing reports that minimize your injuries. The counter: We prepare you for the IME. We attend with you where permitted. We obtain the IME doctor’s prior reports and testimony history to show the jury the pattern. And we make sure your treating physicians — the doctors who actually operated on you, who actually saw your wounds, who actually diagnosed your PTSD — provide the medical evidence that matters.
Play 6: The “pre-existing condition” argument. If you had any prior history of anxiety, depression, headaches, or physical complaints, the defense will argue that your current symptoms are not from the shooting but from your pre-existing condition. The counter: The eggshell-plaintiff doctrine — a principle recognized across U.S. jurisdictions — holds that a defendant takes the victim as they find them. A pre-existing vulnerability that made the harm worse does not reduce the defendant’s liability; it can enlarge the damages. A person who was managing mild anxiety before the shooting and now has severe PTSD from being shot did not cause their own worsened condition — the shooter did.
What a Shooting Case Is Worth in Midland County
Every case is different, and anyone who tells you a specific dollar figure before reviewing the medical records, the crime history, and the insurance coverage is not telling you the truth. But the legal and economic framework for valuing a shooting case in Midland County can be stated honestly.
The low end: $1 million to $3 million. This floor assumes recovery limited to the shooter’s estate — which is likely to have minimal assets — plus modest insurance, and weaker property-owner foreseeability arguments. If no commercial property owner can be joined on a negligent-security theory, and the shooter’s estate is judgment-proof, the collectible recovery may be limited.
The high end: $20 million to $50 million or more. This ceiling assumes successful negligent-security claims against one or more commercial property owners with adequate insurance or assets, plus wrongful-death and multiple surgical-injury claims by high-earning-capacity victims in the oil industry. A wrongful-death case for a young oil-industry worker earning $120,000 to $180,000 per year, with thirty years of expected working life ahead, generates a lost-earning-capacity figure alone in the millions — before pain and suffering, before loss of companionship, before the survival action for the decedent’s conscious pain and suffering. Stack four surgical gunshot-wound cases on top of that, each with medical bills in the hundreds of thousands, future surgical needs, nerve damage, scarring, and PTSD — and the aggregate exposure to a deep-pocket commercial defendant can reach eight figures.
Punitive damages. Texas allows exemplary damages in cases involving gross negligence or willful misconduct. These are capped under Texas’s statutory framework — generally limiting punitives to the greater of two times economic damages plus non-economic damages up to a statutory ceiling, or a fixed dollar amount. We will not state the exact cap here because the calculation is case-specific and must be confirmed against the current statute. But the availability of punitive damages is a real lever, particularly against a property owner who had documented prior violent crime on the premises and did nothing.
The collectibility problem. A catastrophic case against a judgment-proof estate and an unidentifiable property owner scores far below one against a deep-pocket commercial owner with documented prior violent crime on the premises. Collectibility is the dominant variable in case valuation — and it is why the investigation into property ownership, insurance coverage, and prior crime history is the first and most important work in the case.
The venue. Midland County District Court is known for a conservative but oil-wealth-influenced jury pool. These are people who understand catastrophic-injury economics — they know what an oilfield job pays, they know what a life-altering injury costs, and they know what it means when a company puts profit over safety. That is an advantage in a negligent-security case, and it is one of the reasons why filing in the right venue matters.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The First 72 Hours: A Practical Roadmap
Medical first. Always. If you were shot, even if the wound seems minor, you need a full medical evaluation — not just for the physical injury but for the delayed complications that gunshot wounds are known for: infection, retained fragments, vascular injury that was not apparent on the first scan. If you were in the vicinity of the shooting and you are experiencing nightmares, flashbacks, hypervigilance, sleep disturbance, or emotional numbness, you need a psychological evaluation. The symptoms you are experiencing are not weakness — they are the normal response of a nervous system that was pushed past its design limits. But they need to be documented in a medical record, because the defense will use any gap in treatment to argue the injury is not real.
Why symptoms lie. Adrenaline masks injury. A person who was shot and walked away from the scene may not feel the full extent of the damage for hours or days. A person who “feels fine” the day after a shooting may be in the emergency room a week later with a delayed hemothorax or a deep-tissue infection. And PTSD symptoms can emerge weeks or months after the event — the DSM-5 expressly recognizes a “delayed expression” specifier where full criteria do not appear until six months or more after the trauma. Do not interpret the absence of symptoms today as evidence that you were not harmed.
Evidence hold. The preservation letter is the most urgent legal action. It goes to every property owner, every business, and every employer that holds evidence. The letter demands that surveillance footage, security logs, incident reports, employment records, and physical evidence be preserved. The day you call is the day those letters go out — because the surveillance footage that proves the shooter’s path and the property’s security failures is being overwritten right now.
What not to sign. Do not sign anything from an insurance company without having it reviewed by a lawyer. Do not sign a release. Do not sign a medical authorization that lets the insurance company fish through your entire medical history. Do not sign a “settlement” that arrives in the mail. If someone hands you a document and tells you it is “just a formality,” it is not a formality — it is a legal document that may extinguish your rights.
What not to say. Do not give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurance company. Do not discuss the shooting, your injuries, or your emotional state on social media. Do not discuss the case with anyone except your lawyer and your doctors. If the adjuster calls, say “I am represented by counsel” and hang up.
What not to post. Nothing about the shooting, your injuries, your medical treatment, your emotional state, your activities, or your legal case. Set your social media to private. Do not let friends tag you. The insurance company is watching.
Personal representative machinery on a death. Before any wrongful-death lawsuit can be filed, a court appoints a personal representative — the person Texas law authorizes to bring the family’s case. We handle that appointment. Meanwhile, the official death certificate is completed, and the family begins the process of burial or cremation. These are the first mechanical steps, and they can be handled by our firm while you grieve.
When to call. Today. Not next week, not next month. The evidence clock is running, the insurance company has already opened a file, and every day that passes is a day the surveillance footage is closer to being overwritten. The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
How We Build a Shooting Case From Day One
Here is how a case like this is actually built — not in broad strokes, but in the specific steps that take it from a family in crisis to a verdict or settlement that pays for a lifetime of care.
Week one: the preservation letter goes out. We identify every property owner, business, and employer that holds evidence. We send a formal preservation demand to each one, naming the specific records — surveillance footage, security logs, incident reports, employment files, 911 recordings, crime-scene evidence — that must be preserved. Once the letter is on file, destruction of the identified evidence becomes spoliation, and a court can impose sanctions.
Weeks one through four: the investigation begins on two parallel tracks. Track one: identify every property where victims were struck and develop the foreseeability record through crime-grid analysis, prior police calls for service, and security-expert inspection of each site’s lighting, surveillance, access control, and staffing. Track two: investigate the shooter’s background for employer-negligence theories — employment file, disciplinary records, any workplace violence complaints, mental-health history, and social media threats.
Weeks four through twelve: expert retention. We retain a board-certified trauma surgeon to review each gunshot-wound victim’s medical records and opine on the mechanism of injury, the surgical interventions, the complications, and the future care needs. We retain a forensic psychologist to conduct PTSD assessments across all victims using validated diagnostic instruments. We retain a security and liability expert to inspect each location, establish the standard of care, and testify to its breach. And we retain a forensic economist to quantify the earning-capacity losses — using Permian Basin wage data, worklife-expectancy tables, and the specific victim’s career trajectory before the shooting.
Months three through nine: discovery and depositions. The records come out in discovery — the property owner’s security incident logs, the employer’s personnel file, the police department’s 911 recordings and body-camera footage. Then the depositions, where the property owner’s safety director explains under oath what security measures were in place, what prior incidents were known, and what was done (or not done) in response. These depositions are where the case is won — because the person who decided not to install cameras, not to hire security, not to fix the broken locks, has to explain that decision on the record.
The number is built. A life-care planner builds the cost stream — every surgery, every therapy session, every medication, every piece of equipment, every year of care, projected across the victim’s expected lifespan. A forensic economist reduces that stream to present value — the lump sum that, invested conservatively, would pay for all of it. The adjuster’s first offer is a fraction of that number. Our demand is the number itself — backed by the medical record, the expert testimony, and the deposition testimony of the people who caused the harm.
Mediation and trial. Mediation is unlikely to succeed early — there are too many victims, too many defendants, and the foreseeability record needs to be developed through key depositions and crime-grid discovery before the insurance companies will pay what the case is worth. But a global mediation among all plaintiffs and all premises defendants should be attempted after the critical depositions are complete. If mediation fails, the case goes to trial — in Midland County District Court, before a jury of people who lived through the 2019 shooting and understand what it means when a property owner fails to protect the people on its premises.
Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña: Who Fights for You
Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is the managing partner of the firm, admitted to the Texas Bar in November 1998, and admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — he studied journalism and public relations at the University of Texas at Austin, and he brings that reporter’s instinct for the story that proves the case. He is the lead counsel in the active $10M+ University of Houston hazing lawsuit — a case that, like a shooting case, is about institutional accountability for preventable harm. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. He is Italian-American, born in New York, raised in Houston, and he has been practicing law in Texas for more than a quarter century. Learn more about Ralph.
Lupe Peña is the firm’s secret weapon — and the insurance industry’s worst nightmare. Lupe spent years as an insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software — programs like Colossus — decided how to value, deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered, how the IME doctor is selected, and how the surveillance is deployed. Now he sits on your side of the table. He is a third-generation Texan with family roots to the King Ranch, born and raised in Sugar Land, and he is fluent in Spanish — he conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Learn more about Lupe.
Together, Ralph and Lupe bring something that most firms cannot: the trial lawyer’s instinct for the courtroom and the insider’s knowledge of the insurance industry’s playbook. When the adjuster tries the “just checking in” call, Lupe knows it is coming because he used to make those calls. When the defense tries to lowball the reserve, Lupe knows the software that generated the number and the inputs that were manipulated to depress it. When the case goes to trial, Ralph is the lawyer who has been standing in front of juries for 27 years.
The firm has recovered more than $50 million for clients — a figure that includes a $5M+ brain-injury settlement, a $3.8M+ amputation settlement, a $2.5M+ truck-crash recovery, and a $2M+ maritime back-injury settlement. We do not guarantee any specific result — past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but we can tell you that the same investigative rigor, the same evidence-preservation protocol, and the same insider knowledge of the insurance industry that produced those results is what we bring to every shooting case we take.
The firm is based in Houston, with offices in Austin and Beaumont, and we take cases across Texas — including Midland and the Permian Basin. We are a Legal Emergency Lawyers™ firm. The hotline is 1-888-ATTY-911. It is answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by live staff — not an answering service. Hablamos Español.
The Permian Basin Context: Why This Case Lives in Midland
Midland is not a blank slate. It is a city of roughly 140,000 people sitting on top of the most productive oil field in the United States. The economy runs on extraction — the rigs, the frac spreads, the water haulers, the wireline trucks, the pump jacks that dot the horizon from I-20 to the New Mexico line. The workforce that feeds that economy earns wages that are among the highest in the country for people who work with their hands and their backs. A roughneck on a drilling rig can earn $100,000 to $150,000 in a good year. A wireline operator can earn more. A frac-field supervisor can earn $200,000.
That earning reality is the economic engine of a shooting case in Midland County. When a 35-year-old oilfield worker with fifteen years of experience is shot and permanently disabled, the lost-earning-capacity figure is not a theoretical exercise — it is a number built from real wage data, real worklife-expectancy tables, and a real career that was cut short. And in Midland County, the jury understands that number because they live in that economy. They know what a rig hand makes. They know what it costs to lose that income. And they know what it means when a property owner on the I-20 corridor failed to protect the people who shop, work, and live along it.
The 2019 Odessa-Midland shooting is the shadow that falls over this case. Seven dead. Twenty-five wounded. A gunman fired from his oil-services job who drove between the two cities shooting at random. The community lived through that. The jury pool lived through that. And when a plaintiff’s lawyer stands in the Midland County District Court and argues that a property owner should have foreseen the danger of a shooting on its premises, the jury is not hearing an abstract argument — they are hearing it in a place where this exact thing has happened before, within living memory, five years ago, twenty miles down the road.
That is the power of trying a negligent-security case in Midland County. The jury gets it. They do not need to be taught that mass shootings happen in the Permian Basin. They were there.
How the Law Applies to the Mobile Nature of This Shooting
This shooting was mobile — it began in one part of Midland and ended at the veterinary clinic. That mobility is a complication, but it is also an opportunity. It means the case may involve multiple premises defendants, each with a different security profile, each with a different relationship to the danger, and each with a different insurance tower.
The legal analysis works like this: for each location where a victim was struck, we must identify the property owner, analyze the security measures in place, and determine whether the shooting was foreseeable at that specific location. A victim struck in a parking lot with no cameras, no lighting, and a history of prior violent crime has a strong negligent-security claim against that property owner. A victim struck on a public sidewalk may face a different analysis — municipal liability is governed by the Texas Tort Claims Act, which has its own notice requirements and damage caps, and which is a different and more difficult path than a claim against a private commercial property owner.
The key is mapping each victim’s injury location to the correct defendant-property. This is one of the first and most critical tasks in the investigation — and it is why the preservation letters must go out to every business along the shooter’s path, not just the final standoff location. The footage from a gas station three blocks from the first shooting may show the shooter’s vehicle, his direction of travel, and the timestamp that establishes the timeline — evidence that no single property owner has an incentive to preserve.
The Workers’ Compensation Fork
If any of the victims were on the job when they were shot — working at the body shop, the veterinary clinic, a business along the shooting route, or even driving for work — there are two lanes of recovery, and most people only know about one.
Lane one: workers’ compensation. This is the no-fault system. It pays medical bills and a portion of lost wages regardless of who was at fault. It is faster than a lawsuit, but it is capped — the benefits are limited by statute, and it does not pay for pain and suffering, mental anguish, or the full measure of lost earning capacity. It also bars you from suing your own employer.
Lane two: the third-party tort claim. This is the lawsuit against everyone who is NOT your employer — the property owner whose security was inadequate, the shooter’s employer who failed to act on warning signs, the management company that failed to maintain safe premises. This claim is not capped by the workers’-comp schedule. It can seek the full measure of damages — medical costs, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, mental anguish, and punitive damages. This is where the real recovery lives.
The workers’-comp carrier may file a lien on any third-party recovery to recoup what it paid — but the lien can often be negotiated down, and the third-party recovery is almost always larger than the comp benefits plus the lien. A family that accepts workers’-comp and never pursues the third-party claim has left the majority of the money on the table.
Evidence Preservation: A Deeper Look at What Each Source Proves
Let us break down the evidence that this shooting generated, system by system — what each source proves, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die.
Commercial surveillance cameras along the shooting route. These cameras — mounted on gas stations, convenience stores, body shops, veterinary clinics, and parking lots — may have captured the shooter’s vehicle, his movements, the moments when victims were struck, and the security conditions (lighting, access, staffing) at each location. Most commercial DVR and NVR systems overwrite on a rolling cycle of seven to thirty days. Some closed businesses may have no one actively collecting footage. The preservation letter must go to each business by name, demanding that all footage from the date and time of the shooting be preserved and not overwritten.
Police body-worn cameras and the armored-vehicle, robot, and drone footage. The Midland Police Department’s response to the active-shooter call generated a massive amount of video evidence — body cameras on every responding officer, the armored vehicle’s external cameras, the robot footage that entered the veterinary clinic, and the drone footage that confirmed the shooter’s death. This footage documents the full sequence of events, the shooter’s final position, the victim locations, and the property conditions at the standoff site. It is subject to the ongoing criminal investigation hold, but it is accessible through the Texas Public Information Act — and requests should be filed promptly to establish a record.
911 call recordings and dispatch logs. These establish the timeline from the public’s perspective: when the first call came in, what callers reported, how long the shooting lasted, when police arrived, and what resources were deployed. They may identify additional witnesses and locations that have not yet surfaced in public reporting. These are retained by Midland Police Department dispatch on standard retention schedules.
The shooter’s employment records. If the shooter was employed — and in the Permian Basin, the oil industry is the dominant employer — the personnel file may reveal a documented history of violence, threats, disciplinary problems, or mental-health crises that the employer knew about and failed to act on. The 2019 Odessa-Midland shooter was a recently terminated oil-services employee, which makes employment-background discovery critical in any Permian Basin shooting case. Employment records can be purged per the employer’s retention policies — expedited discovery or preservation letters to employers must go out within days.
Crime-statistics reports and prior-incident records. These are the cornerstone of foreseeability. Prior violent crime at or near the shooting locations is what converts a tragic but unforeseeable event into a viable negligent-security claim. Police reports are public records obtainable through formal requests. Private security incident logs at commercial properties — the property owner’s own record of what happened on the property before this shooting — can be destroyed per company policy. The preservation letter to the property owner must demand these logs by name.
Medical records from Midland Memorial Hospital. These document injury severity, surgical interventions, complications, prognoses, and future care needs. They are the damages engine for every victim claim. They are HIPAA-protected and require client or representative authorization. They should be obtained promptly while the records are current and before hospital record-retention cycles expire.
Physical crime-scene evidence. Bullet trajectories, shell-casing locations, blood-spatter patterns, and property damage reconstruct the shooting geometry and identify where each victim was positioned relative to security features. The crime scene will be released by law enforcement after processing — and once released, property owners may remediate and alter conditions. A prompt scene inspection and photographic documentation by a retained expert is essential before the physical evidence is modified.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue if the shooter is dead?
Yes. The criminal case ended with the shooter’s death, but the civil case is a separate legal system that did not die with the shooter. You can sue the shooter’s estate for the intentional tort of assault and battery — though the estate may have limited assets and insurance policies typically exclude intentional acts. More importantly, you can sue other parties whose negligence contributed to the harm: property owners who failed to provide adequate security, employers who failed to act on warning signs, and management companies that failed to maintain safe premises. The shooter’s death closes the criminal door — it does not close the civil one.
Who is legally responsible for a shooting?
The shooter is the primary wrongdoer, but the shooter is not the only potentially liable party. Under Texas premises-liability law, a business-property owner who invites the public onto its property owes those visitors a duty to take reasonable measures to protect them against foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. If the property had a history of violent crime and the owner did nothing — no cameras, no security, no lighting, no access control — the owner can be held liable. If the shooter’s employer knew of dangerous propensities and failed to act, the employer can be held liable for negligent hiring, retention, or supervision. The defendant map in a shooting case is wider than most people realize — and identifying every responsible party is the first critical task.
What if the shooting happened on public property?
If the shooting occurred on a public sidewalk, street, or government-owned property, the claim may involve the Texas Tort Claims Act, which has its own notice requirements, damage caps, and procedural rules that are different from — and more restrictive than — a claim against a private commercial property owner. The Texas Tort Claims Act requires notice to the governmental entity within a specific period, and the damages are capped by statute. However, many shootings that appear to have occurred “on public property” actually involved private commercial property adjacent to the public right-of-way — a parking lot, a storefront, a business entrance. The exact location where each victim was struck must be mapped precisely to determine whether the claim runs against a private property owner (full tort recovery) or a governmental entity (TTCA-limited recovery). This is one of the first questions we answer in the investigation.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit?
Texas’s statute of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death is generally two years from the date of injury or death. This is the deadline set by Texas’s wrongful-death and personal-injury statutes — miss it and the case is barred forever, no matter how strong the evidence. There are limited tolling provisions that may extend the deadline in certain circumstances — for minors, for example, or in cases involving fraudulent concealment — but the general rule is two years, and we treat it as a hard wall. Two years sounds like a long time, but it is not. The evidence-preservation clock runs in days and weeks, not years. The medical records take months to compile. The expert reports take months to prepare. The discovery process takes months to complete. By the time you are ready to file, a year may have passed — and if you started late, the remaining year may not be enough. The call you make today is the call that protects the deadline.
How much is my shooting case worth?
No honest lawyer can give you a specific dollar figure without reviewing the medical records, the crime history at the property, the insurance coverage, and the specific facts of your case. But the framework is this: a shooting case involving a fatality and multiple surgical injuries, with a viable negligent-security claim against a deep-pocket commercial property owner in the high-wage Permian Basin, can range from $1 million at the low end (if recovery is limited to the shooter’s estate) to $20 million or more at the high end (if negligent-security claims succeed against insured commercial defendants). The dominant variable is collectibility — a catastrophic case against a judgment-proof estate scores far below one against a commercial owner with documented prior violent crime on the premises and adequate insurance. The only way to know what your specific case is worth is to have it evaluated by a lawyer who can assess the specific facts.
What if I was just a witness and was not physically hurt?
Texas recognizes bystander recovery for emotional distress in certain configurations — a person who witnessed the shooting or its immediate aftermath, who was in the zone of physical danger, and who had a close relationship to a direct victim. These claims are governed by Texas’s bystander recovery framework, and their viability depends on the specific facts of proximity, the threat to the bystander’s own safety, and the relationship to the direct victim. If you were in the parking lot when the shooting started, if you heard the forty gunshots, if you saw people fall — you may have a claim even if no bullet touched you. The psychological injury from witnessing a mass shooting is real, it is diagnosable, and in the right circumstances, it is compensable. It deserves evaluation.
Can I still recover if I was partly at fault?
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence standard with a 51% bar. If you are found to be 50% or less at fault, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault but not eliminated. If you are found to be more than 50% at fault, you are barred from recovery. In a shooting case, the argument that the victim was contributorily negligent is almost always a desperate reach by the defense — a person who is shot while going about their daily life is not at fault for failing to anticipate a mass shooting. But the adjuster will try to pin percentage points on you because every percentage point is money. We take it seriously and build the record that makes it impossible for a jury to assign you any meaningful share of fault.
Do I have to pay a lawyer up front?
No. We work on a contingency fee — 33.33% if the case settles before trial, 40% if it goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The investigation is free. The preservation letters are free. The evidence-gathering is free. You pay nothing out of pocket. If we recover money for you, our fee comes out of the recovery. If we do not recover money, you owe us nothing. We are able to work this way because we take cases we believe in — and because we know that the people who need a lawyer the most are the people who can least afford to pay one by the hour.
What if the property owner says they did not know violence could happen?
This is the standard defense in every negligent-security case, and it is beaten with evidence. The property owner’s own incident logs, the police calls-for-service history at the address, the crime-grid analysis of the surrounding area, and the testimony of the property’s own security personnel — these are the records that prove the owner knew or should have known about the danger. And the 2019 Odessa-Midland shooting establishes that the region has a documented history of this specific kind of violence — a mass shooting by a person connected to the oil industry — which makes the “we never saw it coming” argument harder to sustain in Midland County than in a place with no such history. The property owner does not get to plead ignorance when the evidence shows they were on notice.
What should I do right now, today?
Three things. First, get medical treatment — for your physical injuries and for your psychological symptoms. If you are experiencing nightmares, flashbacks, hypervigilance, sleep disturbance, or emotional numbness, tell a doctor. The medical record is the proof. Second, do not sign anything from an insurance company, do not give a recorded statement, and do not post about the shooting on social media. Third, call a lawyer. The preservation letters that freeze the surveillance footage before it is overwritten — the letters that can make the difference between a case worth a million dollars and a case worth twenty million — go out the day you call. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. It is answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Hablamos Español. The consultation is free, and we do not get paid unless we win your case.
If you or someone you love was in Midland when the gunfire started — if you were shot, if you were there, if you lost someone — the legal system gives you a path to accountability that the criminal case cannot provide. The shooter is dead. The property owners, the employers, and the insurance companies are not. The evidence that proves what they knew and what they failed to do is disappearing every day. The call you make today is the call that preserves it.
1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win. Hablamos Español.
This page is legal information, not legal advice for your specific case. Every case is different. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.