Odessa and Midland, Texas Mass Shooting: Legal Rights of Victims and Families
If you are reading this page, someone you love was taken from you on August 31, 2019 — or they were among the twenty-two who survived with injuries they will carry for the rest of their lives. You may be the parent of a fifteen-year-old girl who had just celebrated her quinceañera three months before a bullet found her at a truck dealership. You may be the wife of a man who worked six days a week to support his family, shot through the window of his car while sitting at a traffic light with his wife and two children beside him. You may be the family of a man who moved from Las Vegas to Odessa because he believed it would be safer — only to be killed in the second mass shooting he was caught in.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are writing to you, not at you. Everything on this page is here to protect you, to answer the questions you have been carrying since that Saturday afternoon in the Permian Basin, and to tell you the truth about what is still possible even now — years after the gunfire stopped outside a movie theater in Odessa.
Here is the first truth: the gunman is dead. He was killed by police after they rammed the mail truck he had hijacked. The criminal case ended the moment he fell. But the civil case — the case that asks who else bears responsibility for what happened to your family — that case is a separate fight, and it is one that does not end with the shooter’s death.
Here is the second truth: the general two-year statute of limitations in Texas has likely expired for most claims arising from this incident. That is a hard reality, and we will not pretend otherwise. But there are exceptions — tolling for minors, the discovery rule for claims you could not have known about until later — and those exceptions may keep certain claims alive. Whether yours is one of them is a question that demands a specific, individual answer from a Texas attorney who knows this law and can tell you honestly what remains.
Here is the third truth: even when the gunman’s estate has nothing, the law does not let the question of accountability end there. A full investigation examines every hand that touched the firearm, every warning sign an employer saw and ignored, every commercial property along that ten-mile corridor where security was absent, and every governmental decision that may have contributed to the harm. These are the third-party theories of liability, and they are where a real case lives.
What Happened: The Ten-Mile Rampage Across Odessa and Midland
On August 31, 2019, a gunman went on a shooting spree that spanned more than ten miles across Odessa and Midland, Texas — two cities in the Permian Basin oil region connected by Interstate 20 and separated by roughly twenty miles of West Texas highway. The rampage began with what officials described as a routine traffic stop, where the gunman opened fire on police and then fled in a gold car, shooting at motorists and residents along the way.
The gunman fired randomly as he drove. At some point during the pursuit, he abandoned the gold car and stole a U.S. Postal Service vehicle — a mail truck — after shooting the letter carrier who was driving it. He continued in the stolen mail truck until police used a marked SUV to ram it outside a movie theater in Odessa, disabling the vehicle. Police then killed the gunman.
Seven people died. Their ages ranged from fifteen to fifty-seven. Twenty-two more were injured, including a seventeen-month-old toddler who suffered shrapnel wounds to her right chest and injuries to her face. The shooting corridor passed through commercial areas, residential neighborhoods, past Ratliff Stadium — the high school football stadium — and ended at a movie theater. Every one of those locations is a place where someone was living an ordinary life when violence found them.
The Permian Basin is oil country. The boom that has defined this region for more than a decade drove heavy commercial truck traffic, a transient workforce, and strained infrastructure. Odessa sits in Ector County. Midland sits in neighboring Midland County. Together, the metro has approximately 320,000 people. It is a working community, oil-industry-connected, where the jury that would hear a case like this is drawn from the same families who work the same fields and drive the same highways where the shooting happened. Ector County jury pools tend to produce conservative tort verdicts compared to places like Harris or Dallas Counties. But a mass shooting involving a fifteen-year-old girl and a toddler is not a typical tort case, and the emotional gravity of this event has the power to transcend the usual venue tendencies.
The Seven Lives Taken
We name them here with respect, not as case numbers but as people whose families lost something that cannot be replaced. Each one was a separate human being with a separate life, and each one represents a separate wrongful death claim under Texas law.
Rodolfo “Rudy” Arco was fifty-seven years old. He was a trucking company owner, a native of Cuba, and a man who had survived a previous mass shooting. His sister told reporters he had moved from Las Vegas to Odessa after the 2017 Route 91 Harvest Festival massacre because he believed West Texas would be safer. He sold everything he had in Las Vegas and moved his family to the Permian Basin in search of safety. He was killed instantly when shots were fired at his truck. A man who fled one mass shooting died in another.
Kameron Brown was an Army veteran. His death was confirmed by his employer, Standard Safety & Supply in Odessa, a company that serves the oil industry. He was found dead in a company pickup truck outside Ratliff Stadium.
Mary Granados was twenty-nine years old. She was a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier, alone in her mail truck, when the gunman hijacked her vehicle and shot her. The USPS issued a statement saying they were “shocked and saddened” and “especially grieving the loss of our postal family member.” She was working. She was doing her job. She was twenty-nine.
Edwin Peregrino was twenty-five years old. He ran into the yard of his parents’ Odessa home to investigate after hearing gunshots. The gunman drove by and opened fire, killing him. His sister, Eritizi Peregrino, said: “It happened at our home. You think you’re safe at your own house. You’re not even safe at your own house.” Edwin was home for the weekend to tell his family about his new job and his new life in San Antonio. His sister’s husband was also shot and survived.
“You think you’re safe at your own house. You’re not even safe at your own house.”
Leilah Hernandez was fifteen years old. She was with her family at a truck dealership where her eighteen-year-old brother Nathan was picking up a truck. As they walked out of the dealership, the gunman opened fire. Nathan wrapped his arms around Leilah and was shot in the arm. Another bullet struck Leilah near her collarbone. Her grandmother said that as the girl died, she pleaded: “Help me, help me.” She was an Odessa High School student who had celebrated her quinceañera just three months earlier, in May. Her grandmother called it “a dream for her.”
Joseph Griffith was forty years old. He was killed while sitting at a traffic light with his wife and two children. His oldest sister, Carla Byrne, said: “This maniac pulled up next to him and shot him, took away his life, murdered my baby brother. Like nothing.” Joseph had previously worked as a math teacher. The day before his death, a former student had told him what an “awesome teacher he was.” He worked six days a week to support his family. His wife and children were in the car. They watched him die.
A seventh victim was also killed. We do not name that person here because the reporting we have does not identify them, and we will not speculate about who they were or what their life meant to their family. They deserve the same dignity as every other person taken that day.
Twenty-Two Injured: The Survivors
Twenty-two people survived with injuries. Each one carries a separate personal injury claim. Among them:
Daniel Munoz was twenty-eight years old, on his way to meet a friend for a drink, when he yielded to a car coming off Interstate 20. He saw what he feared was the barrel of a rifle in the hands of the driver. He got down. The gunman fired at least three shots — one hit the engine, one struck the driver’s side window, one struck a rear window. Shattered glass punctured his left shoulder. He survived. He told reporters he was physically OK but bewildered: “I’m just trying to turn the corner and I got shot — I’m getting shot at? What’s the world coming to?”
Anderson Davis was seventeen months old. She suffered shrapnel in her right chest and injuries to her face. Texas Governor Greg Abbott shared a text from her mother, Kelby Davis: “Her mouth is pretty bad, but will heal and can be fixed. Thankfully it doesn’t seem like her jaw was hit. Just lips, teeth and tongue.” The toddler was released from UMC Health System in Lubbock — a Level I trauma center roughly 140 miles and two and a half hours from Odessa. Her mother also wrote: “Toddlers are funny because they can get shot but still want to run around and play.”
The distance matters. The nearest Level I trauma center for the Permian Basin is in Lubbock, hours from Odessa. Every severely injured victim who survived was transported there — by ground or by air — and those hours of transit are part of the medical story and part of the damages. The cost of a medevac flight, the delay in reaching definitive surgical care, the strain on a regional EMS system stretched thin across a vast rural landscape — all of it enters the calculation of what this shooting cost its survivors.
Why the Gunman’s Death Does Not End the Search for Accountability
When the shooter is dead, the instinct is to think the legal question is closed. The person who pulled the trigger is gone. There is no criminal trial. There is no defendant to convict.
But civil law asks a different question: not just who pulled the trigger, but who else — through their own negligence, their own failure to act, their own decision to look the other way — bears some share of responsibility for what happened? The gunman’s estate is the direct, intentional tortfeasor. But the estate is almost certainly insolvent. The real fight is for the third parties whose choices created the conditions for this tragedy.
Under Texas law, a wrongful death claim may be brought against every party whose conduct contributed to the death — not only the person who fired the weapon. This means the question is never simply “can we sue the shooter?” The question is: who else is on the chain of causation, and which of them has the resources to make a family whole?
The collectibility challenge is real, and we will not pretend it is not. Without identifying and proving liability against a solvent third-party defendant, the practical recovery may be limited to Crime Victims’ Compensation benefits and whatever insurance the gunman’s estate may carry. But the investigation that identifies those third parties is the core of what a mass-shooting case is — and it is an investigation that begins with evidence, not assumptions.
The Firearm Acquisition Chain: Who Sold or Transferred the Weapon?
Federal firearms regulations under 18 U.S.C. § 922 govern who may possess a firearm and what dealers must do before completing a sale. Licensed firearms dealers are required to conduct background checks through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) before transferring a firearm. Federal law also requires licensed dealers to retain the ATF Form 4473 — the record of every firearms transaction — for twenty years.
That retention requirement is the lifeline of a negligent-sale theory. If the gunman obtained the weapon through a licensed dealer, the Form 4473 from that purchase should still exist. It is a federal record, kept for two decades, and it is the foundation of any investigation into whether the sale was lawful.
If the gunman obtained the weapon through a private sale — a sale between two individuals who are not licensed dealers — the picture changes. Texas, like many states, does not require a background check for private firearms transfers. A private seller is not required to run a NICS check. But a private seller can still be liable for negligent transfer if they knew or had reasonable cause to believe the recipient was a prohibited person — someone legally barred from possessing a firearm under federal law. The prohibited-person categories under 18 U.S.C. § 922 include convicted felons, fugitives, unlawful drug users, persons who have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution, persons dishonorably discharged from the military, persons subject to certain domestic violence protective orders, and others.
The key question is: how did the gunman get the gun? An ATF trace — the process by which federal agents trace the firearm from its manufacturer to the dealer who sold it to the first purchaser — is the starting point. ATF trace data should be requested immediately. If the trace reveals a licensed-dealer sale, the Form 4473 and the NICS check records are the evidence. If the trace reveals a private sale, the question becomes whether the transferor knew or should have known the gunman was prohibited — and whether any reasonable person in the transferor’s position would have refused to hand over the weapon.
A negligent-sale or negligent-transfer theory is a recognized basis for liability in Texas mass-shooting litigation. It requires proving that the seller or transferor breached a duty of reasonable care in the transaction and that the breach was a proximate cause of the harm. This is not an easy case to build, but it is a real one, and it begins with the ATF trace.
The Employer’s Knowledge: Warning Signs Before the Rampage
Public reporting has indicated that the gunman was fired from his job before the shooting and that he called 911 before the rampage began. These two facts — termination and a 911 call — open a line of inquiry into whether the gunman’s employer knew or should have known of his dangerous propensities before the day of the shooting.
Under Texas law, an employer may be liable for negligent retention, supervision, or termination if it knew or should have known that an employee posed a danger to others and failed to take reasonable protective action. This theory does not require the employer to have predicted a mass shooting. It requires the employer to have had information — threats, violent outbursts, mental health deterioration, workplace conflicts, disciplinary history — that a reasonable employer would have recognized as a warning sign.
The investigation targets the gunman’s personnel file: his employment application, his driving record, his road test, his annual reviews, his medical clearance, and — critically — any HR complaints, coworker statements, incident reports, or disciplinary actions that documented warning signs. It also targets the termination documentation: the reason given, the process followed, and any post-termination threats or communications the employer was aware of.
Texas does not mandate indefinite retention of employment records. Employers may destroy personnel files after statutory retention periods expire. This means the employment records from 2019 may already be gone — unless someone demanded they be preserved. A preservation letter — a formal written demand that the employer freeze all records related to the gunman’s employment — is the mechanism that stops the destruction clock. If that letter was never sent, the records may have been legally destroyed. If it was sent, the employer’s failure to preserve them could itself be evidence of consciousness of guilt.
The employer’s post-termination obligations are also relevant. If the gunman made credible threats during or after his termination, the employer may have had a duty to notify law enforcement or take other reasonable steps to protect the public. The 911 call the gunman reportedly made before the shooting is itself a piece of this puzzle — it suggests a deteriorating mental state that may or may not have been known to the employer, and the dispatch records from that call are critical evidence.
Premises Liability and Negligent Security Along the Shooting Corridor
The shooting spanned more than ten miles across Odessa and Midland, passing through commercial areas, residential neighborhoods, and past landmarks like Ratliff Stadium. Several victims were shot on or adjacent to commercial property — particularly the truck dealership where Leilah Hernandez was killed and the areas around Ratliff Stadium where Kameron Brown was found dead.
Under Texas premises liability law, a business owner or property operator owes a duty to protect invitees — customers, guests, visitors — from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. The duty depends on whether the criminal activity was foreseeable and whether reasonable security measures were in place. Foreseeability is the battleground. The defense will argue that a random mass shooting is not foreseeable to a specific business. The plaintiff’s counter requires showing that the danger was foreseeable — through prior incidents of violence at the property, the crime profile of the surrounding area, or conditions on the premises that made the harm more likely.
For a mass shooting, the foreseeability argument is challenging but not impossible. The question is not whether the business should have predicted a mass shooting specifically, but whether it should have had reasonable security measures in place to protect against foreseeable criminal violence — and whether the absence of those measures contributed to the harm. Security cameras, adequate lighting, controlled access, security personnel, and barriers are all measures that a premises-security expert would evaluate against the standard of care for the type of business and its location.
For the truck dealership specifically, the question is whether the dealership had any security presence, whether its parking lot was monitored, whether prior incidents of crime had occurred at or near the property, and whether any reasonable security measure — even a camera, even a guard — might have altered the outcome. These are hard questions with uncertain answers, and the defense will fight foreseeability at every step. But they are real questions, and a thorough investigation asks them.
Governmental Liability: The Traffic Stop That Started It All
The shooting began with a routine traffic stop conducted by law enforcement. The gunman opened fire on police during that stop, then fled and began shooting at random. Claims against the governmental entities that conducted the traffic stop are subject to the Texas Tort Claims Act, which waives sovereign immunity only in narrow circumstances and requires strict notice compliance.
The Texas Tort Claims Act limits governmental liability in several important ways. First, it imposes a notice requirement that is typically shorter than the general two-year statute of limitations — meaning a family that waited to pursue a claim against a governmental entity may have lost the right to do so even before the general limitations period expired. Second, the Act does not waive immunity for intentional torts or for most discretionary governmental acts. Third, the emergency response exception may apply to police conduct during an active shooting response.
These barriers are significant. Claims related to the initiation and execution of the traffic stop, and claims related to the police pursuit and response, face substantial immunity defenses. But they are not automatically barred — the specific facts of how the traffic stop was conducted, whether officers followed proper procedure, and whether any failure in the response contributed to any victim’s injuries are all questions that require factual investigation. The governmental notice deadline is a threshold issue that must be confirmed for each claim and each governmental entity involved.
For families of victims of the USPS letter carrier, Mary Granados, the Federal Tort Claims Act governs claims against the United States. The FTCA requires an administrative claim to be filed with the appropriate federal agency within two years of the accrual of the claim — a deadline that has likely passed for this 2019 incident. However, the federal workers’ compensation system may provide benefits to the family of a federal employee killed in the line of duty, and that system operates on different rules than the tort system. These are questions that require specific, individualized answers from an attorney familiar with federal employment law and the FTCA.
Texas Wrongful Death and Survival Claims: Who Can File and What Damages Are Recoverable
Texas law provides two parallel causes of action after a fatal injury: a wrongful death claim and a survival claim. They are separate claims, brought by different parties, and they compensate different losses.
Wrongful Death Claims
The Texas Wrongful Death Act permits recovery by surviving spouses, children, and parents of the deceased. These are the statutory beneficiaries — the people the law recognizes as having suffered a compensable loss when a family member is killed. A personal representative of the estate may also bring the claim on behalf of the beneficiaries.
Wrongful death damages compensate the family for what they lost: the financial support the deceased would have provided, the services the deceased would have performed, the care, counsel, and companionship the deceased would have given, and the mental anguish and emotional suffering the family experiences. In Texas, wrongful death damages are not capped for most claims against private defendants. The law does not impose a statutory ceiling on non-economic damages in standard negligence or intentional-tort claims against private parties.
Survival Claims
Survival claims are brought by the estate of the deceased, not by the family directly. They compensate for what the victim personally experienced before death: conscious pain and suffering, medical expenses incurred prior to death, and any other damages the victim would have been able to recover had they survived. Several victims in this shooting survived briefly after being shot — Leilah Hernandez was alive long enough to plead for help. Those minutes or hours of conscious suffering support survival damages that are separate from and in addition to the wrongful death damages the family recovers.
Comparative Fault
Texas applies a modified comparative negligence standard with a 51 percent bar. This means a plaintiff’s recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault, and they are barred entirely if they are more than 50 percent at fault. In an intentional-shooting context, comparative fault against the victims is generally inapplicable — a person sitting at a traffic light, walking out of a dealership, or working in a mail truck is not at fault for being shot. But the concept matters for third-party defendants who may try to shift blame, and it is a rule every family should understand.
Punitive Damages
Punitive damages — damages meant to punish rather than compensate — are theoretically available against any defendant whose conduct involved gross negligence or malice. Against the gunman’s estate, punitive damages are available for intentional conduct. Against a negligent third-party defendant, they are available if the defendant’s conduct rises to gross negligence. Punitive damages in Texas are subject to a statutory cap under the Texas Damages Act, but that cap does not apply when the defendant committed a felony. Whether any third party’s conduct in this case would meet that threshold is a question that depends entirely on the facts the investigation uncovers.
The Statute of Limitations: Honest Answers About Time
We will not tell you that you have plenty of time. We will not tell you that it is too late. We will tell you the truth, and then we will tell you to confirm your specific situation with a Texas attorney immediately.
The general statute of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death claims in Texas is two years. For an incident that occurred on August 31, 2019, that general deadline would have expired on or about August 31, 2021. Most claims arising from this shooting — against the gunman’s estate, against third-party defendants, against commercial property owners — were subject to that two-year clock and have likely expired.
But there are exceptions, and those exceptions may be the door that keeps a claim alive:
Tolling for minors. Under Texas law, the statute of limitations is tolved — paused — for claims belonging to a person who was a minor at the time of the injury. The clock does not begin running until the minor reaches the age of eighteen. Anderson Davis was seventeen months old on August 31, 2019. If her personal injury claim was not filed before the general deadline, it may still be alive because the statute of limitations for her claim would not have begun running until she turns eighteen. The same principle applies to any other victim who was under eighteen at the time of the shooting — including Leilah Hernandez, who was fifteen.
The discovery rule. Under Texas law, the statute of limitations for certain claims does not begin running until the plaintiff discovers, or through reasonable diligence should have discovered, the injury and its cause. If a family only recently learned that a specific third party — a firearm seller, an employer — played a role in creating the conditions for the shooting, the discovery rule may extend the deadline for claims against that party. The discovery rule is not a blanket extension; it applies claim by claim and defendant by defendant. Whether it applies to your specific situation is a question that requires an individualized legal analysis.
Governmental notice deadlines. Claims against governmental entities under the Texas Tort Claims Act are subject to notice requirements that are typically shorter than the general two-year limitations period. For a 2019 incident, these notice deadlines have almost certainly expired. But the specific notice requirements vary by governmental entity, and the consequences of missing them vary by claim. An attorney must confirm the current status of any governmental claim.
Federal claims. Claims against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act require an administrative claim to be filed within two years of accrual. For a 2019 incident, this deadline has likely passed. However, federal workers’ compensation benefits for the family of Mary Granados may operate on different rules and should be confirmed with an attorney familiar with the federal employment system.
Here is what we cannot do: we cannot tell you on this page whether your specific claim is still alive. That answer depends on the identity of the victim, the age of the victim at the time of the shooting, the identity of the defendant, the theory of liability, and the specific facts of what you knew and when you knew it. What we can tell you is that if there is any chance your claim is still alive, the cost of confirming that with an attorney is a phone call — and the cost of assuming it is too late when it is not is everything.
Evidence Preservation: What Still Exists From 2019
The shooting happened on August 31, 2019. More than four years have passed. Some evidence is already gone. Some evidence is preserved in law enforcement custody. Some evidence may still be alive if someone demanded it be preserved — and may be gone if no one did. Here is the system-by-system inventory of what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die.
Firearm Purchase Records (ATF Form 4473)
Federal law requires licensed firearms dealers to retain ATF Form 4473 for twenty years. If the gunman purchased the weapon from a licensed dealer, that record should still exist. It is the single most durable piece of evidence in this case — a federal record with a twenty-year retention mandate. If the purchase was through a private sale, no Form 4473 may exist, and the evidence of the transaction may be limited to whatever the ATF trace and the seller’s own records reveal. ATF trace data should be requested immediately.
Police Body-Worn Camera and Dashcam Footage
The traffic stop, the pursuit, and the eventual disabling of the mail truck were all captured by police body-worn cameras and dashcams. This footage is almost certainly preserved in the criminal investigation file maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety and local law enforcement. Civil counsel must request this footage through discovery or subpoena. It is likely the most important visual evidence of the event, and it is the most likely to have survived because it was gathered as part of a major criminal investigation.
911 Call Records and Dispatch Logs
The gunman reportedly called 911 before the shooting. Dispatch logs from August 31, 2019, would reconstruct the timeline of the shooting, the police response, and any prior calls about the gunman’s behavior. These records are generally retained per agency policy but may be subject to destruction schedules. For a high-profile mass shooting, they are almost certainly preserved in the criminal investigation file — but they must be formally requested through open-records or discovery.
Employment Records, Termination Documentation, and HR Complaints
The gunman’s personnel file — his application, his driving record, his annual reviews, his medical clearance, any HR complaints, coworker statements, incident reports, and the documentation of his termination — is the core of any employer liability theory. Texas does not mandate indefinite retention of employment records. Employers may destroy personnel files after their retention period expires. If a preservation letter was sent before the records were destroyed, they may still exist. If no letter was sent, they may be gone. A preservation letter should be sent immediately to the employer — even now — because some employers retain records longer than the legal minimum, and because the absence of records after a preservation demand is itself evidence.
Surveillance Footage From Businesses Along the Corridor
Most commercial CCTV systems overwrite on a rolling cycle of thirty to ninety days. For a 2019 incident, the surveillance footage from businesses along the shooting corridor is almost certainly lost — overwritten hundreds of times over — unless it was specifically preserved by law enforcement during the criminal investigation. This is the most painful evidence loss in the case, because that footage would have shown the exact locations, timing, and circumstances of each shooting. But some footage may have been collected by police as part of the criminal investigation, and that collected footage should be requested through discovery.
Medical Records
Medical providers in Texas typically retain records for seven to ten years for adults and longer for minors. For a 2019 incident, adult medical records may still exist. For the seventeen-month-old toddler, who was a minor, the retention period is longer — records of minors are often retained until the patient reaches adulthood plus the state’s general retention period. Medical records document the nature, extent, and treatment of injuries for each of the twenty-two survivors and establish conscious pain and suffering for survival claims of the deceased. These records should be obtained through authorization or subpoena.
Gunman’s Cell Phone Records, Social Media, and Communications
Cell phone carriers typically retain records for one to five years. For 2019 data requested in 2024 or later, the records may already be purged. Social media data may or may not be preserved, depending on the platform’s retention policies and whether law enforcement obtained the data during the criminal investigation. If the data was preserved by law enforcement, it may be available through discovery. If it was not, it may be permanently lost.
Ballistics and Crime-Scene Reconstruction Evidence
The Texas Department of Public Safety and local law enforcement would have collected and preserved ballistics evidence, bullet trajectories, shell casings, and the physical proof linking each victim’s injuries to the gunman’s weapon. This evidence is critical for causation against any third-party defendant. It is almost certainly preserved in the criminal investigation file and must be requested through discovery or subpoena.
The pattern is clear: the evidence that was gathered by law enforcement during a major criminal investigation is the evidence most likely to have survived. The evidence that was held by private parties — employers, businesses, cell phone carriers — is the evidence most likely to have been lost. The preservation letter is the mechanism that bridges that gap, and it is never too late to send one — even if some records are already gone, the demand itself creates legal leverage and may surface records the holder retained beyond the minimum.
Damages: The Human and Economic Cost of Seven Lives
Seven wrongful deaths and twenty-two injuries create a catastrophic damages profile. Against a solvent defendant, each individual wrongful death claim would likely range from $5 million to $25 million or more in a Texas venue, depending on the victim’s age, earning capacity, and the strength of the liability theory. The aggregate range — if liability could be established against a solvent third-party defendant or multiple defendants — is estimated at $5 million to $150 million or more.
Here is how that number is built, life by life:
Lost Earning Capacity
For the adult victims, lost earning capacity is a significant component. Rodolfo Arco was a trucking company owner — a high-income business owner whose lost earnings and lost business value must be calculated by a forensic economist. Joseph Griffith was forty years old, working six days a week, a former teacher with decades of working life ahead. Mary Granados was a twenty-nine-year-old federal employee with a stable career, benefits, and a pension. Edwin Peregrino was twenty-five, just starting a new career in San Antonio. Kameron Brown was an Army veteran employed in the oil industry supply chain.
For Leilah Hernandez, who was fifteen, the damages include the complete loss of a full human life expectancy with no offset for proven earnings — every year she would have lived, every dollar she would have earned, every milestone she would have reached. A forensic economist projects what a person of her age, sex, and education would have been statistically expected to earn over a working lifetime, using Bureau of Labor Statistics worklife-expectancy data, and reduces that figure to present value.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages compensate for what no receipt can measure: the mental anguish of the family, the loss of companionship, the loss of counsel and guidance, the loss of the life itself. For each family, this is a separate calculation, based on the relationship between the deceased and the surviving beneficiaries. Texas does not impose a statutory cap on non-economic damages for most claims against private defendants — the full human loss is compensable.
Survival Damages
For victims who survived briefly after being shot, the estate may recover for conscious pain and suffering. Leilah Hernandez was alive after she was shot — she called for help. Joseph Griffith was in his car with his family. These minutes and hours of conscious suffering are compensable as survival damages, separate from and in addition to the wrongful death damages the family recovers.
The Toddler’s Future Medical Needs
Anderson Davis was seventeen months old. She suffered shrapnel in her right chest and facial injuries affecting her lips, teeth, and tongue. Her future medical needs — dental reconstruction, potential scarring treatment, any developmental or psychological consequences of the trauma — are part of a life-care plan that a certified life-care planner would build, projecting every surgery, every therapy, every medical visit across her childhood and into adulthood, and a forensic economist would reduce that cost stream to present value.
Bystander Emotional Distress
Family members who witnessed the shootings may have separate claims for negligent infliction of emotional distress. Joseph Griffith’s wife and children were in the car when he was shot. Leilah Hernandez’s family was at the dealership. Eritizi Peregrino witnessed her brother’s shooting. Texas recognizes bystander claims for family members who were present at the scene and witnessed the injury-causing event, and the emotional harm those witnesses suffered is a separate, compensable loss.
Indirect Economic Costs
The NSCISC and other federal economic data sources measure not just medical costs but indirect costs — lost wages, fringe benefits, and productivity — that are separate from the medical and non-economic damages. For a family that lost a breadwinner, the indirect economic loss can exceed the direct medical cost many times over. A complete damages calculation counts both.
These numbers are not predictions. They are the framework a jury would use to value what was lost. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the framework is real, and it is how a court would approach the question of what seven lives and twenty-two injuries are worth.
The Defense Playbook and How We Counter Each Move
In a mass-shooting case, the defense is not a single insurance adjuster sitting at a desk. It is a team of corporate lawyers — hired by whichever third-party defendant you name — whose job is to minimize or eliminate liability. Here are the plays they run and how we counter each one.
Play 1: “The shooter is dead and insolvent — there is no one to sue.”
This is the first wall. The defense will tell you the case is over because the person who pulled the trigger is gone and his estate has nothing. The counter is the third-party liability map: the firearm seller who should not have transferred the weapon, the employer who knew of warning signs, the property owner whose security was inadequate. Each of these is a separate defendant with separate insurance, and the case against them does not require the gunman to be alive or solvent. The case requires proving that their negligence was a proximate cause of the harm — that their failure, combined with the gunman’s intentional act, produced the deaths and injuries.
Play 2: “The statute of limitations has run.”
The defense will argue that the two-year clock has expired and the courthouse door is closed. The counter is the exception map: tolling for minors whose claims do not begin running until they turn eighteen, the discovery rule for claims you could not have identified until recently, and the specific procedural posture of each claim against each defendant. Not every claim is saved by an exception — but some are, and the only way to know which is a claim-by-claim, defendant-by-defendant analysis by a Texas attorney.
Play 3: “A random mass shooting is not foreseeable to a business owner.”
This is the foreseeability defense, and it is the main battleground in any premises-liability theory. The defense will argue that no business owner could have predicted a random mass shooting. The counter requires showing that the foreseeability question is not whether the business should have predicted this specific event, but whether it should have had reasonable security measures in place to protect against foreseeable criminal violence — and whether the absence of those measures contributed to the harm. Prior incidents of crime at or near the property, the crime profile of the surrounding area, and the adequacy of the security that was in place are all evidence on this question.
Play 4: “Our policy excludes intentional acts and criminal conduct.”
The defense will point to insurance policy exclusions for intentional acts, criminal conduct, or assault and battery. The counter is that the claim against a third-party defendant is not a claim for the intentional act — it is a claim for the third party’s own negligence. A negligent-sale claim against a firearms dealer, a negligent-retention claim against an employer, and a negligent-security claim against a property owner are all negligence claims, and they implicate different coverage than the intentional-tort exclusion. The coverage fight is its own battle, and it is one that requires a lawyer who knows how to read a policy and identify which exclusions apply and which do not.
Play 5: “Governmental immunity bars any claim against the police.”
The defense will invoke governmental immunity for claims related to the traffic stop and the police response. The counter is that the Texas Tort Claims Act provides limited waivers of immunity in narrow circumstances, and the specific facts of how the traffic stop was conducted and how the response was managed must be examined to determine whether any waiver applies. The governmental notice deadline is a threshold issue that must be confirmed immediately. This is the hardest wall to climb, and we will tell you honestly if it cannot be climbed.
Each of these plays is designed to make you give up before the fight starts. The counter to every one of them is the same: a thorough investigation, built on the evidence that survives, prosecuted by a lawyer who knows where to look and what to demand. That is the work.
How a Mass Shooting Case Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a mass-shooting civil case is constructed, from the first phone call to the courtroom:
Week One — The preservation demand. The day you call, letters go out. Letters to the employer demanding the gunman’s personnel file be frozen. Letters to the firearm dealer demanding the Form 4473 be preserved. Letters to every commercial property along the shooting corridor demanding surveillance footage, incident reports, and security records be saved. Letters to law enforcement requesting the criminal investigation file, the body-worn camera footage, the ballistics evidence, and the 911 dispatch records. The preservation letter is the mechanism that stops the destruction clock. Some of these letters are years late for this 2019 incident — but some evidence may still exist, and the demand itself creates legal leverage.
The investigation phase. Once the preservation demands are out, the investigation begins. An ATF trace is requested to identify the firearm’s purchase chain. The criminal investigation file is sought through open-records requests and discovery. The gunman’s employment history is reconstructed from whatever records survive. The security posture of each commercial property along the corridor is evaluated. A forensic crime-scene reconstructionist maps the shooting sequence — the locations, the trajectories, the timing — using the ballistics evidence and the physical proof. A premises-security expert evaluates the standard of care for each business where a victim was shot. A firearms-transfer regulatory expert evaluates whether the sale or transfer of the weapon met federal and state requirements.
The discovery phase. If a lawsuit is filed, discovery begins. The personnel files, the ATF records, the police investigation files, the security camera footage that survived, the 911 dispatch records, the medical records, and the employment records are all produced through subpoenas and discovery requests. Depositions follow — the employer’s HR director, the firearms dealer, the property manager, the responding officers. Each deposition is an opportunity to establish what the defendant knew, when they knew it, and what they did or did not do about it.
The damages phase. In parallel, the damages are built. A forensic economist projects lost earning capacity for each deceased victim based on age, education, and worklife expectancy. A life-care planner builds the cost of future medical care for each injured survivor. A mental-health expert documents the emotional distress of the bystander witnesses. Medical records are obtained and organized. The life-care plan and the economic projection are reduced to present value — the single number that represents the lifetime cost of the harm.
The mediation phase. After key discovery is obtained, the case is positioned for mediation — but only after the liability evidence is strong enough to support the demand. Mediating before the firearm-transfer chain is identified or before the employer’s knowledge is established would undervalue the claims. The sequencing matters: build the liability case first, then bring the number.
The trial phase. If mediation does not produce a fair resolution, the case goes to trial. In Ector County or Midland County, the jury will be drawn from the same working-class, oil-industry-connected community where the shooting happened. Voir dire must address gun-rights sentiment, law-enforcement support, and attitudes toward corporate responsibility for third-party criminal acts. The emotional gravity of a case involving a fifteen-year-old girl and a toddler is not lost on a jury of neighbors — but it must be presented with dignity, not exploitation.
First Steps for Families
If you are a family member of someone killed or injured in the Odessa-Midland mass shooting, here is what you should do — and what you should not do — right now:
Do confirm the statute of limitations for your specific claim. If your loved one was a minor at the time of the shooting, tolling may keep the claim alive. If you recently discovered information about a third party’s role, the discovery rule may extend the deadline. But these exceptions are not automatic — they must be analyzed individually. A phone call to a Texas attorney costs nothing and answers the threshold question of whether your claim is still alive.
Do not sign anything from an insurance company without consulting an attorney. If any insurance company — the gunman’s, an employer’s, a property owner’s — has contacted you with a release or a settlement offer, do not sign it. A release signed now may forever bar the claim you could have brought.
Do not post on social media about the shooting, the case, or your family’s grief. Defense investigators monitor social media for posts that can be used to minimize damages or contradict testimony. The less you post, the less there is to mine.
Do request the criminal investigation file. If you are a family member, you may have rights under the Texas Public Information Act to request records from the criminal investigation. Your attorney can help you make these requests.
Do document everything you remember. If you were present at the shooting, write down everything you saw, heard, and felt — now, while the memory is as fresh as it can be. If you lost a family member, write down what you know about their life, their work, their relationships, and what they meant to you. This documentation is part of the damages story.
Do call us. The call is free. The consultation is free. We will tell you honestly whether your claim is still alive, what it may be worth, and what the next steps are. If we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you that too. You do not owe us anything unless and until we recover money for your family.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I still file a lawsuit for the Odessa mass shooting?
The general two-year statute of limitations in Texas has likely expired for most claims arising from the August 31, 2019 shooting. However, there are important exceptions. If the victim was under eighteen at the time of the shooting — like fifteen-year-old Leilah Hernandez or seventeen-month-old Anderson Davis — the statute of limitations is tolled until the victim turns eighteen. The discovery rule may also extend certain claims if you only recently learned that a third party contributed to the harm. Whether your specific claim is still alive depends on the identity of the victim, the defendant, and the facts of your case. A Texas attorney can answer this question in a single phone call.
Who can be held legally responsible when the gunman is dead?
The gunman’s estate is the direct intentional tortfeasor, but the estate is almost certainly insolvent. The real defendants in a mass-shooting civil case are third parties whose negligence contributed to the conditions for the tragedy: the firearm seller or transferor who may have negligently sold or transferred the weapon, the gunman’s employer who may have known of warning signs and failed to act, commercial property owners who may have failed to provide adequate security, and potentially governmental entities involved in the traffic stop — though governmental claims face significant immunity barriers.
What is the statute of limitations for a mass shooting case in Texas?
Texas applies a general two-year statute of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death claims. For this August 31, 2019 incident, that deadline expired around August 31, 2021 for most claims. However, tolling for minors pauses the clock until the victim turns eighteen, and the discovery rule may extend claims that could not have been identified until recently. Governmental claims under the Texas Tort Claims Act have shorter notice deadlines. The only way to know if your claim survives is to have a Texas attorney confirm the current limitations rule for each claim and each victim.
How much is a mass shooting wrongful death case worth?
Against a solvent defendant, each individual wrongful death claim in this case would likely range from $5 million to $25 million or more, depending on the victim’s age, earning capacity, and the strength of the liability theory. The aggregate value of all seven deaths and twenty-two injuries, if liability could be established against solvent third-party defendants, could range from $5 million to $150 million or more. However, collectibility is the gating factor — without identifying and proving liability against a solvent defendant, the practical recovery may be limited to Crime Victims’ Compensation benefits and any available insurance. These figures are estimates based on case-type analysis, not predictions. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What evidence still exists from the 2019 shooting?
Firearm purchase records (ATF Form 4473) are retained by licensed dealers for twenty years and should still exist. Police body-worn camera and dashcam footage is almost certainly preserved in the criminal investigation file. 911 call records and dispatch logs are likely preserved. Ballistics and crime-scene reconstruction evidence is in law enforcement custody. Medical records for adults may still exist (7-10 year retention), and minor’s records are retained longer. However, surveillance footage from businesses has almost certainly been overwritten, and the gunman’s cell phone records and social media data may have been purged by carriers. A preservation letter should be sent immediately to any party that may still hold relevant records.
Can I sue the business where my loved one was shot?
Potentially, yes. Under Texas premises liability law, a business owner owes a duty to protect invitees from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. The key question is foreseeability — whether the business should have anticipated criminal violence and whether reasonable security measures were in place. For a random mass shooting, the foreseeability argument is challenging but not impossible. Prior incidents of crime at or near the property, the crime profile of the area, and the adequacy of existing security are all relevant. A premises-security expert would evaluate the standard of care, and an attorney would assess whether the claim can be pursued given the statute of limitations.
What if the gun was sold privately without a background check?
Texas does not require a background check for private firearms sales between individuals who are not licensed dealers. However, a private seller can still be liable for negligent transfer if they knew or had reasonable cause to believe the recipient was a prohibited person under federal law — a convicted felon, a fugitive, someone involuntarily committed to a mental institution, or another disqualified category. The key question is what the seller knew or should have known about the buyer. An ATF trace would identify the firearm’s purchase chain, and the investigation would examine whether a private transfer occurred and whether the transferor had reason to know the gunman was prohibited.
Can the gunman’s employer be held responsible?
Potentially, yes, if the employer knew or should have known of the gunman’s dangerous propensities and failed to take reasonable protective action. Public reporting indicates the gunman was fired from his job before the shooting and called 911 before the rampage. The employer’s personnel file — HR complaints, coworker statements, disciplinary actions, termination documentation — is the evidence that would show whether warning signs existed and were ignored. Texas does not mandate indefinite retention of employment records, so these records may have been destroyed unless a preservation letter was sent. An attorney can assess whether an employer liability theory is viable and whether the records still exist to support it.
What compensation is available through the Crime Victims’ Compensation Fund?
The Texas Crime Victims’ Compensation Fund, administered by the Office of the Attorney General, provides financial assistance to victims of violent crime and their families. Benefits may include medical expenses, funeral costs, counseling, and lost wages. The fund is not a substitute for civil litigation — it is a state-administered benefit with its own application process and eligibility requirements. The fund may provide some immediate assistance while a civil case is being evaluated, but it does not compensate for the full measure of damages available in a wrongful death or personal injury lawsuit.
How do I choose a mass shooting attorney?
Choose a firm that knows wrongful death law, premises liability, and the specific challenges of mass-shooting litigation — including the firearm-transfer chain, employer liability, and the statute of limitations issues that are unique to a case where the gunman is dead. Ask whether the firm has experience with the types of third-party liability theories that apply when the primary tortfeasor is insolvent. Ask about the firm’s fee structure — it should be contingency-based, meaning you pay nothing unless the firm recovers money for you. And ask whether the firm will tell you honestly if your claim is too old to pursue — because a firm that promises everything without examining the limitations question first is not a firm you want handling your family’s case.
What if my child was injured — does the statute of limitations work differently?
Yes. Under Texas law, the statute of limitations is tolved — paused — for claims belonging to a person who was a minor at the time of the injury. The clock does not begin running until the minor turns eighteen. Anderson Davis was seventeen months old on August 31, 2019. Her personal injury claim would not have begun running until she turns eighteen, meaning her claim may still be alive even though the general two-year deadline has passed. Any other victim who was under eighteen at the time of the shooting may also have a tolled claim. An attorney must confirm the specific tolling rule for each minor victim.
Can family members who witnessed the shooting recover for emotional distress?
Yes, under certain circumstances. Texas recognizes bystander claims for negligent infliction of emotional distress for family members who were present at the scene and witnessed the injury-causing event. Joseph Griffith’s wife and children were in the car when he was shot. Leilah Hernandez’s family was at the dealership. Eritizi Peregrino witnessed her brother Edwin’s shooting, and her husband was also shot. Each of these witnesses may have a separate claim for the emotional harm they suffered — a claim that is separate from and in addition to the wrongful death claim of the family and the survival claim of the estate.
The Firm: Who Stands With You
Attorney911 is The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a Houston-based trial firm that takes wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases across Texas. We have been in practice since July 18, 2001 — more than twenty-four years. Our aggregate recoveries exceed $50 million, a figure that includes a $5 million-plus brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million-plus amputation settlement, and millions recovered in trucking wrongful death cases. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Ralph P. Manginello is our Managing Partner. He has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998 — more than twenty-seven years. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, including the Bankruptcy Court. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, and the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association. He is Italian-American, born in New York, raised in Houston. Before he was a lawyer, he was a journalist — which means he learned to ask questions before he learned to argue in court. Ralph’s full background is here.
Lupe Peña is our Associate Attorney. He has been licensed in Texas since December 6, 2012 — more than thirteen years. Before he joined our firm, he sat on the other side of the table: he was an insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm, the kind of firm that represents the companies you are fighting. He knows how claims are valued by the software adjusters use, how IME doctors are selected, how surveillance is deployed, and how delay tactics work — because he used those tools for the defense. Now he uses that knowledge for injured people. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Lupe’s full background is here.
We are not the counsel of record for any victim of the Odessa-Midland mass shooting. We have not been retained by any family, have not filed any lawsuit, and have not taken any action on this case. What we are is a resource — the education, the governing law, the evidence clocks, the honest evaluation of what a case like this is worth and whether it can still be pursued. Everything on this page is here to protect you, whether or not you ever call us.
But if you do call, here is what the call looks like. It is free. It is confidential. You will speak to a live person, not an answering service — we have 24/7 live staff. We will listen to what happened to your family. We will tell you honestly whether the statute of limitations has expired for your claim or whether an exception may keep it alive. We will tell you what evidence may still exist and what has likely been lost. We will not promise you a dollar figure. We will not guarantee an outcome. We will tell you the truth, and if your claim is viable, we will tell you what comes next — and if it is not, we will tell you that too.
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. Our fee is 33.33% of the recovery before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. You pay nothing out of pocket. The consultation is free. The call is free.
Our firm has experience with mass-shooting litigation — we have published detailed analysis of the Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting and the legal rights of victims of mass-casualty events. One of the Odessa victims, Rodolfo Arco, moved from Las Vegas to Odessa specifically because he had survived the Route 91 shooting and believed West Texas would be safer. The connection between these two tragedies is a reminder that the question of accountability in a mass shooting is never just about one gunman — it is about every choice, every failure, and every party on the chain that made the harm possible.
We handle wrongful death claims across Texas, and we understand the specific challenges of a case where the primary tortfeasor is dead and the fight is for third-party liability. We know how to read an insurance policy, how to identify which exclusions apply and which do not, and how to build a case that reaches the parties who have the resources to make a family whole.
Call Us
The call is free. The consultation is free. The answer to whether your claim is still alive is a phone call away.
1-888-ATTY-911 — 1-888-288-9911
Contact us any time, day or night. We have live staff available 24/7.
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