West Texas City Employee Shooting — Your Legal Rights After a Shooting on the Job in Texas
If you are reading this page, someone you love may be the city employee who was shot in West Texas — or you may be that employee, reading from a hospital bed while the rest of the family stands in a hallway trying to understand what happens next. Either way, you are in a moment you never planned for, and the questions hitting you are not the kind that wait for business hours. Who is responsible? Does it matter that the victim worked for the city? Is there money to recover, and from whom? What should you do right now, and what should you refuse to do?
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases across Texas, including the regions of West Texas where this shooting occurred. We are writing this page because the details of this specific incident are still developing, and the families who need answers right now should not have to wait for the full picture to emerge before understanding their rights. What follows is not speculation about what happened. It is the legal framework — the real, specific, Texas-law framework — that governs what happens after a city employee is shot on the job, and the practical steps that determine whether a case survives or quietly dies before anyone files it.
If you need to talk to someone right now, at this hour, call 1-888-ATTY-911. The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. And if we are not the right fit for what you are facing, we will tell you that plainly and point you to someone who is.
What We Know — and What Must Be Investigated
Here is what has been confirmed: a shooting occurred in West Texas, and the victim has been identified as a city employee. Law enforcement has corroborated the victim’s employment status. Beyond that, the full circumstances — the precise location, whether the shooting was fatal or non-fatal, whether the employee was performing work duties at the time, and the identity of the shooter — are still being developed.
Those unknowns are not a reason to wait. They are the reason to move. Every one of those facts determines which legal doors are open, and the evidence that would answer them is disappearing on a clock that runs in days, not months.
West Texas is a vast region — from El Paso in the west to Lubbock and Abilene in the east, from the Permian Basin oilfields around Midland and Odessa to the border communities and small towns scattered across hundreds of miles of highway. City employees across this region — public-works crews, utility workers, code-enforcement officers, parks staff, sanitation drivers, building inspectors — perform field duties in every kind of environment: public streets, municipal facilities, private commercial lots, residential neighborhoods, and industrial zones. Where this shooting happened, and what the employee was doing when it happened, will shape the entire case. But the investigation that answers those questions is the investigation that has to start now, while the proof still exists.
Can You Sue After a Shooting in Texas? — The Direct Answer
Yes — but who you can sue, and how much you can recover, depends on three facts that must be established immediately: whether the shooting was fatal or non-fatal, whether the employee was on duty, and where the shooting occurred.
If the shooting was fatal, the surviving spouse, children, and parents may bring a wrongful-death action, and the estate may bring a survival action for the decedent’s pain and suffering, medical expenses, and funeral costs. If the shooting was non-fatal, the employee may pursue a personal-injury claim for medical costs, lost wages, diminished earning capacity, pain and suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life.
If the employee was performing job duties at the time — and for a city employee, that is often the case, because field work is the job — two legal lanes open simultaneously. The first is a workers’ compensation claim through the municipality, which provides medical benefits and wage replacement regardless of fault. The second is a third-party tort claim against any non-employer whose negligence contributed to the shooting — a property owner who failed to provide adequate security, a management company that ignored known crime at the location, a security contractor that failed to perform its duties. These two lanes run parallel. Workers’ compensation does not block the third-party claim. Most families never learn this, and the insurance industry prefers it that way.
If the shooting occurred on private commercial property — a parking lot, a shopping center, an apartment complex, a commercial building where the employee was performing an inspection or utility work — the property owner may owe a duty of care that includes protection from foreseeable criminal acts. That is the foundation of a negligent-security claim, and it is where the real civil recovery often lives.
The Evidence Clock — What Disappears and How Fast
This is the section that decides whether your case survives. Every piece of evidence that would prove what happened, who is responsible, and what it is worth is on a clock right now. Some of those clocks run out in days.
Surveillance footage. If the shooting occurred on or near commercial property, the CCTV cameras that captured the shooter’s approach, the shooting itself, and the aftermath are almost certainly overwriting on a rolling cycle. Most commercial systems overwrite in 7 to 30 days. Some systems cycle even faster. Public-city cameras may have similar or shorter retention. Once that footage is gone, it is gone — and it is the single most powerful piece of proof in a negligent-security case. A preservation letter demanding that the property owner freeze all footage must go out within days, not weeks. If it does not, the footage records over itself and the truth disappears with it.
Police incident report and crime-scene file. The official record of the shooting — witness statements taken at the scene, ballistics evidence, the responding officers’ observations — is being compiled right now by the investigating agency. Active criminal-investigation files are not immediately accessible to the public, but a formal preservation and production request should be lodged with the agency before evidence is returned, destroyed, or archived to offsite storage where it becomes harder to obtain.
City employee work records. Dispatch logs, time sheets, work-order assignments, and GPS tracking data establish whether the employee was in the course and scope of employment at the time of the shooting. This is the evidence that triggers workers’ compensation coverage and defines the third-party claim framework. Municipal records-retention schedules vary, and these records can be destroyed under standard retention cycles if not demanded promptly.
Crime-history reports for the shooting location. This is the core of any negligent-security case. Police calls-for-service data and prior-incident reports for the property where the shooting occurred are obtainable through open-records requests, but they can take weeks to produce. Private security-incident logs maintained by the property owner — the internal records that show what the owner knew about crime at its own property — can be destroyed unless a litigation hold is issued. These records are the proof that the property owner knew or should have known about the unreasonable risk of violent crime and failed to act.
Witness statements. People who saw the shooting, saw the shooter, or can describe the security conditions at the location are critical. Their memories degrade within weeks. A licensed investigator should canvass the area within 72 hours of the incident, while observations are still fresh and witnesses are still reachable.
Medical records. The acute-care documentation — emergency-department records, operative notes, imaging studies, trauma-surgery reports — establishes the nature and severity of the gunshot injury, the treatment rendered, the prognosis, and the causal link between the shooting and all claimed damages. These records are generally preserved by providers, but they should be obtained before they are archived to offsite storage where retrieval becomes slower and more difficult.
The generalist’s mistake: waiting for the criminal case to resolve before pursuing the civil case. The criminal case can take a year or more. The evidence for the civil case will be gone in 30 days. The preservation letter goes out the day you call, not the day the prosecutor finishes.
The First 72 Hours — What to Do and What Not to Do
Medical first. If the employee survived, the priority is emergency medical care. Gunshot wounds can have delayed presentations — internal bleeding that does not show symptoms for hours, vascular injuries that compromise blood flow to a limb, spinal injuries that worsen with movement. Even if the injury seems manageable, a full trauma evaluation is essential. The medical record from the first hours is also the strongest proof of the injury’s severity and causation.
Do not give a recorded statement. Within days, someone will call — it may be the city’s workers’ compensation adjuster, it may be an insurance representative for a property owner, it may be someone who sounds sympathetic and says they “just want to understand what happened.” That call is recorded. Everything said on it can be quoted later to minimize the claim. The answer to “can I get your statement?” is: “I need to speak with an attorney first.” That is not adversarial. It is protective.
Do not sign anything. A check may arrive fast — sometimes before the full extent of injuries is known — with a release form attached. Signing that release closes the case permanently. No matter how much pressure is applied or how helpful the paperwork seems, nothing should be signed without an attorney reviewing it.
Do not post on social media. Nothing about the shooting, nothing about the injuries, nothing about the investigation. Insurance adjusters and defense attorneys monitor social media, and a single post — even one that seems harmless — can be used to dispute the severity of injuries or to argue comparative fault.
Preserve evidence. If it is safe to do so, photograph the scene, the lighting conditions, the security measures (or lack of them), and any visible hazards. If there are witnesses, get their names and contact information. If the employee’s work records, dispatch logs, or work-order assignments exist, request copies before they are purged under routine retention schedules.
If the shooting was fatal, the estate must be established. A personal representative must be appointed by the court — the one person Texas law authorizes to bring the family’s wrongful-death and survival claims. We handle that appointment. Meanwhile, the official police report is being completed, and the scene evidence — surveillance, lighting, security conditions — is degrading.
Call a lawyer. Not next month. Not after the criminal case resolves. Now. The preservation letter that freezes the CCTV footage, the work records, the crime-history data, and the witness statements has to go out while that evidence still exists. We send it the day we are retained.
Texas Law: The Rules That Govern Your Case
Texas law gives you specific rights and specific deadlines. Understanding them is the difference between a case that moves forward and one that dies on a technicality.
The two-year statute of limitations. Texas imposes a two-year statute of limitations on both personal-injury and wrongful-death claims. That means a lawsuit must be filed within two years of the date of the shooting — or the date of death, if the shooting was fatal. Two years sounds like a long time. It is not. Building a negligent-security case — pulling the crime-history data, retaining a security expert, conducting depositions, developing the life-care plan or the economic-damages model — takes months. The two-year clock is real and unforgiving, and missing it ends the case permanently, no matter how strong the facts are.
Modified comparative negligence — the 51% bar. Texas applies a modified comparative-negligence standard with a 51-percent bar. That means:
A plaintiff is barred from recovery only if found more than 50 percent at fault, with damages reduced proportionally up to that threshold.
In plain English: if the jury finds the victim was 40% at fault, the family still recovers — but the recovery is reduced by 40%. If the jury finds the victim was 51% at fault, the family recovers nothing. This is why the insurance adjuster works so hard to pin percentage points on the victim. Every point of fault they can assign is money off the recovery. In a shooting case, the defense may argue that the employee was in a dangerous area unnecessarily, or failed to follow workplace-safety protocols, or contributed to the circumstances. The answer is that a person doing their job — performing city duties in the location their employer sent them — is not at fault for a criminal actor’s decision to shoot. But the adjuster will try, and the 51% bar is the battlefield.
Exemplary damages. Texas allows punitive (exemplary) damages upon clear-and-convincing evidence of gross negligence, malice, or fraud. In a negligent-security case, this means proving that the property owner knew about repeated prior violent incidents on the premises and took no corrective action — that the owner was consciously indifferent to the risk. Exemplary damages in Texas are subject to a statutory cap tied to the amount of economic damages. The key point: exemplary damages are available, but they require a higher standard of proof than ordinary negligence. They are not automatic. They are earned through the evidence — the prior-incident records, the ignored warnings, the conscious choice to do nothing.
The Texas Tort Claims Act. If the shooting occurred on city property — a municipal facility, a public-works yard, a city-owned parking lot — a claim against the city itself (beyond workers’ compensation) would be governed by the Texas Tort Claims Act. The TTCA imposes notice requirements and limits the waiver of sovereign immunity to specific categories of claims. The notice deadline can be as short as six months, and the damages are capped. A claim against the city itself is distinct from the workers’ compensation claim and from the third-party claim against a private property owner. Whether the TTCA applies depends entirely on where the shooting occurred and who controlled the property. This is a threshold question that must be answered early.
No general damage cap on non-economic damages. Texas does not impose a general statutory cap on non-economic damages (pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of companionship) in non-medical-malpractice personal-injury or wrongful-death cases. This means a jury can award what the harm is actually worth, without an artificial ceiling on the human losses. The only cap that touches these cases is the exemplary-damages cap, which applies to the punitive portion, not the compensatory portion.
The Workers’ Compensation and Third-Party Fork
This is the section that most families never hear about, and it is the section that can double the value of the case.
When a city employee is shot on the job, two legal lanes open at the same time:
Lane 1: Workers’ compensation. The city, as the employer, carries workers’ compensation coverage. The workers’ comp claim provides medical benefits, wage replacement (typically a percentage of the employee’s average weekly wage), and impairment benefits — regardless of who was at fault. This is the “no-fault” lane. It is faster, it does not require proving negligence, and it runs on its own timeline. But it is also capped: workers’ comp does not pay for pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of companionship, or the full human cost of a catastrophic injury or death. It pays the medical bills and a portion of the wages. That is all.
Workers’ compensation is the exclusive remedy against the employer. In most cases, the employee cannot sue the city in tort for the shooting itself. The comp claim is the only claim against the employer.
Lane 2: The third-party tort claim. If someone other than the employer — a property owner, a property-management company, a security contractor — was negligent, and that negligence contributed to the shooting, the employee (or the family, in a wrongful-death case) can sue that third party in tort. This is the “fault” lane. It is slower, it requires proving negligence, and it takes longer. But it pays the full measure of damages: not just medical bills and a fraction of wages, but pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of earning capacity, loss of companionship, disfigurement, and — in cases of gross negligence — exemplary damages.
These two lanes run parallel. The workers’ comp claim does not block the third-party claim. The third-party claim does not block the workers’ comp claim. A family can pursue both at the same time.
The subrogation lien. Here is the catch: the workers’ compensation carrier has a subrogation lien on any third-party recovery. If the comp carrier paid $100,000 in medical bills and wage replacement, and the family then recovers $1 million from the property owner, the comp carrier has a right to be reimbursed from that recovery. But the lien is not absolute — it can be negotiated, reduced, and in some cases the attorney’s fee comes off the top before the lien is calculated. Managing the subrogation lien is one of the most important pieces of the case, and it is something a generalist often mishandles.
The generalist’s mistake: filing the workers’ comp claim and stopping there. The comp claim pays a fraction of what the case is worth. The third-party claim — against the property owner who failed to provide adequate security, or the management company that ignored the crime pattern — is where the real recovery lives. Both lanes must be pursued, and the interplay between them must be managed from day one.
Who Can Be Held Responsible — The Defendant Map
A shooting case is rarely about one defendant. The shooter is the primary criminal actor, but the shooter is often judgment-proof — uninsured, without assets, and sometimes never identified. The civil case looks past the shooter to the people and entities whose choices made the shooting possible or foreseeable.
The shooter. The person who pulled the trigger is the primary intentional-tort and criminal actor. Identifying the shooter is essential, but the shooter is often the least solvent defendant. In many cases, the shooter has no insurance and no assets to recover against. The civil case does not depend on the shooter’s solvency — it depends on whether other parties share legal responsibility for allowing the shooting to happen.
The property owner or possessor. If the shooting occurred on commercial property — a parking lot, a shopping center, an apartment complex, a commercial building — the owner or possessor of that property owes a duty to protect invitees from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. Liability requires proof that the owner knew or should have known of an unreasonable risk of violent crime and failed to implement reasonable security measures: adequate lighting, surveillance cameras, access control, security patrols, working locks. A city employee performing work duties on private property is almost certainly a business invitee — the highest-duty status under Texas premises law. The property owner must inspect for dangers and protect against them, not merely warn after the fact.
The property management company. If a separate management entity controlled day-to-day operations and security decisions at the location, it owes an independent duty of care. The management company is the entity that decided how many security guards to staff, whether to fix the broken lights, whether to install cameras, whether to respond to prior incidents. It is often the entity with the most direct knowledge of the crime risk — and the most direct responsibility for failing to address it.
The security contractor. If a third-party security company was retained to provide patrols, monitoring, or access control, its negligence in performing those duties may be a proximate cause of the shooting. Did the security company skip contracted patrols? Did its guards fail to respond to suspicious activity? Did it create a false sense of safety by promising security it never delivered? A negligent-undertaking theory can impose liability for the negligent performance of a security contract.
The municipal employer. The city itself is the employer, and workers’ compensation is the exclusive remedy against it. But the city’s own workplace-violence prevention policies, its dispatch records, its knowledge of dangerous conditions at the locations it sends employees to — all of this is relevant evidence, even if the city itself is not the tort defendant. The city’s records may also reveal whether the employee was warned about known dangers at the location, whether safety protocols were followed, and whether the employer’s own decisions contributed to the exposure.
Gunshot Injuries: The Medical Reality
A gunshot wound is not a single injury. It is a cascade — the initial penetration, the tissue destruction along the bullet’s path, the secondary damage from fragmentation and cavitation, and the long-term consequences that can unfold over months or years.
The mechanism. When a bullet enters the body, it creates a permanent wound channel — the tissue directly destroyed by the projectile’s path. But the damage does not stop there. The kinetic energy of the bullet creates a temporary cavity that stretches tissue far beyond the bullet’s actual path, tearing blood vessels, nerves, and organs that the bullet never touched. If the bullet strikes bone, fragments become secondary missiles. If the trajectory crosses the torso, the injury can involve the liver, spleen, kidneys, bowel, major blood vessels, and the spine — sometimes all at once.
The specific injuries depend on the trajectory. A gunshot to the torso can cause life-threatening internal bleeding from vascular injury to the aorta, vena cava, or iliac vessels. It can perforate the bowel, causing sepsis. It can fracture the spine and cause permanent paralysis. A gunshot to an extremity can sever the femoral or brachial artery, causing exsanguination, or shatter the bone, requiring open reduction and fixation. A gunshot to the head causes penetrating traumatic brain injury — skull fracture, intracranial hemorrhage, diffuse axonal injury from the shock wave — and the cognitive deficits that follow may not fully declare themselves for weeks.
The proof problem the defense exploits. The defense will argue that the injury was “unavoidable” given the nature of a gunshot, or that pre-existing conditions contributed to the outcome, or that the employee’s own conduct (being in a dangerous location) caused the exposure. The answer is the medical record built from the moment of injury forward: the emergency-department documentation, the operative reports, the imaging studies, the rehabilitation records, the neuropsychological testing if a brain injury is involved. The injury is proven with medicine, not with argument.
The lifetime cost. A catastrophic gunshot injury — one involving spinal cord damage, traumatic brain injury, or the loss of a limb — carries a lifetime cost measured in the millions. Emergency surgery and ICU care run into the hundreds of thousands in the first weeks alone. Multiple surgeries, rehabilitation, ongoing medical care, prosthetics, home modification, and a lifetime of reduced earning capacity compound the total. For a city employee with a documented salary, benefits, pension contributions, and a predictable career trajectory, the economic-damages foundation is concrete — a forensic economist can model the complete loss with precision. The human losses — the pain, the fear, the changed life, the empty chair — are separate, and in Texas they are not capped.
If the shooting was fatal, the damages expand to include the family’s losses: loss of earning capacity, loss of companionship and society, mental anguish, loss of inheritance, and funeral expenses. The estate’s survival action covers the decedent’s pain and suffering between injury and death, plus medical expenses incurred. A city employee’s salary, benefits, and pension create a concrete economic-damages model that a forensic economist can build with precision.
What a Shooting Case Is Worth in Texas
We are not going to tell you what your case is worth, because we do not yet know the facts that determine it. What we can tell you is the framework — the facts that drive the number, and the range those facts produce.
Based on the limited information available, case values in this type of incident could range from approximately $250,000 on the low end to $8,000,000 or more on the high end. That range is extraordinarily wide because the facts that determine value are still being developed.
The low end assumes a non-fatal injury with uncertain third-party liability and limited defendant assets. If the shooter is the only defendant and is judgment-proof, and no viable property-owner or security-contractor theory exists, the recovery may be limited to workers’ compensation benefits — which, while essential, do not compensate for pain and suffering or the full human cost.
The high end assumes a wrongful death of a wage-earning city employee with a strong negligent-security claim against a commercial property owner who had documented prior violent incidents on the premises and adequate insurance coverage. In that scenario, the economic damages alone — lost earnings, lost benefits, lost pension, funeral costs — can run into the millions. The non-economic damages — loss of companionship, mental anguish, the value of the life itself — add substantially on top. And if the property owner’s conduct meets the gross-negligence standard, exemplary damages become available.
The facts that determine where a case falls in this range:
- Whether the shooting was fatal or non-fatal
- The specific location and property type — public street, private commercial lot, municipal facility
- Whether the employee was on duty and in the course and scope of employment
- The identity and solvency of any third-party defendant
- The prior crime history of the location — the proof that the property owner knew or should have known
- The adequacy of security measures at the location — lighting, surveillance, access control, patrols
- The severity of the injury and the lifetime cost of care
- The employee’s salary, benefits, pension, and career trajectory
A single-asset property owner with no prior incidents and minimal insurance materially deflates the value. A commercial landlord with documented prior violent incidents and a substantial umbrella policy materially inflates it. The investigation that answers these questions is the investigation that determines what the case is worth.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — and How We Counter It
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims from people exactly like the reader. He sat across the table from the people who were hurt and watched the machine work. Now he sits on this side of the table, and he knows every play before it runs. Here are the plays the adjuster will make, and the counter to each.
Play 1: The “just checking in” recorded statement. Within days, someone will call sounding sympathetic. They will say they “just want to understand what happened” and ask the employee or a family member to “tell us the story” on a recording. That recording is engineered to capture language that can be quoted later — “I was feeling okay” before the MRI results come back, “I shouldn’t have been there” before the duty-status records are pulled, “I think the lighting was fine” before the security expert inspects the scene. The counter: Do not give a recorded statement without your attorney. The answer is always: “I need to speak with my lawyer first.” That is not obstruction. It is protection. The adjuster is not your friend — they are a professional whose job is to minimize what the company pays.
Play 2: The fast settlement check with a release. A check may arrive quickly — sometimes before the full extent of injuries is known, sometimes before the family has even hired a lawyer. Attached to the check is a release form. Signing that release closes the case permanently. The check is designed to look like help. It is designed to be a trap — a small payment now in exchange for giving up the right to pursue the full value later, when the real injuries have declared themselves and the real evidence has been developed. The counter: Never sign a release without an attorney reviewing it. A quick check is not generosity — it is a calculated strategy to close the case before its true value is known.
Play 3: The “no notice” defense. The property owner’s insurance company will argue that the shooting was unforeseeable — that the owner had no notice of prior crime at the location and therefore no duty to provide additional security. The counter: Calls-for-service data and crime-grid reports from the local police department can establish constructive notice even without actual notice. If police were called to the property repeatedly for violent incidents, assaults, drug activity, or weapons calls, the property owner is deemed to have known about the risk — whether they actually did or not. The private security-incident logs the owner maintained internally are even more powerful, if they can be obtained before they are destroyed.
Play 4: The comparative-fault squeeze. The adjuster will argue that the employee was partly at fault — for being in a dangerous area, for not following safety protocols, for contributing to the circumstances. Every percentage point of fault they can assign reduces the recovery, and if they can push it past 50%, the family recovers nothing. The counter: A city employee performing assigned work duties in a location their employer sent them is not at fault for a criminal actor’s decision to shoot. The duty to protect against foreseeable crime runs to the property owner, not to the employee who was doing their job.
Play 5: The workers’ comp subrogation squeeze. The workers’ compensation carrier will assert a lien on any third-party recovery, trying to take a large share of the proceeds. The counter: The lien can be negotiated, reduced, and in some cases the attorney’s fee and costs come off the top before the lien is calculated. Managing the subrogation lien is one of the most important pieces of the case — and it is something that requires the experience of knowing how the comp carrier calculates its position and where the pressure points are.
How a Shooting Case Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk — week one through resolution — of how a negligent-security case is built after a shooting.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out. It goes to the property owner, the management company, and any security contractor, demanding that they freeze all CCTV footage, incident logs, security staffing records, maintenance records, and crime-mapping data. It goes to the investigating law-enforcement agency, requesting preservation of the crime-scene file, ballistics evidence, and witness statements. It goes to the city, requesting preservation of the employee’s dispatch logs, time sheets, work-order assignments, and GPS data. The clock on every piece of evidence is stopped the moment that letter is received.
Weeks two through four. A licensed investigator canvasses the scene — photographing lighting conditions, camera placements (or the absence of them), access-control points, and the surrounding neighborhood. Witnesses are identified and interviewed while their memories are fresh. Open-records requests are filed with the local police department for calls-for-service data and prior-incident reports at the property, going back 24 to 36 months. The employee’s work records are obtained to confirm duty status and establish the workers’ compensation claim.
Months one through three. A board-certified security expert is retained to evaluate the adequacy of lighting, surveillance, access control, and staffing against applicable industry standards — the recognized security standards published by ASIS International and local building and fire codes. The expert walks the scene, reviews the crime-history data, and produces an opinion on whether the security measures at the property were reasonable given the known crime risk. The workers’ compensation claim is filed and prosecuted in parallel. The medical records are obtained and organized.
Months three through six. The crime-history data comes back from the police department. The calls-for-service reports are analyzed — how many times was police called to this property for violent crime, drug activity, weapons, assaults? The prior-incident records from the property owner’s own internal logs — if they were preserved — are even more powerful. The notice predicate is built: the proof that the property owner knew or should have known about the unreasonable risk of violent crime and failed to act. If the shooting was fatal, the personal representative is appointed, and the wrongful-death and survival claims are structured.
Months six through twelve. The case is filed. Discovery begins — depositions of the property owner, the management company, the security contractor. The internal communications come out: the emails where the property manager acknowledged the crime problem, the memos where the security company recommended measures that were never implemented, the incident reports that were filed and ignored. The life-care plan is built for a catastrophic injury — every surgery, every therapy session, every piece of equipment, every caregiver hour, projected across the injured person’s life expectancy and reduced to present value. The forensic economist models the lost earning capacity — the salary, the benefits, the pension, the career trajectory, all converted to a present-value number the jury can understand.
Resolution. Most cases settle. Some go to trial. The number at the end is built from all of it — the frozen evidence, the crime-history data, the security expert’s opinion, the medical records, the life-care plan, the economic model, and the depositions where the defendants’ own people explained their choices under oath. The adjuster who offered a fast check in week one is now looking at a fully developed case with a number that is many times larger — and a trial date that is getting closer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue if my family member was shot while working for the city?
Yes. If the shooting occurred on private property and the property owner failed to provide adequate security against foreseeable crime, you may have a negligent-security claim against that property owner — separate from and in addition to any workers’ compensation claim through the city. Workers’ compensation is the exclusive remedy against the city as the employer, but it does not block a third-party claim against a negligent property owner, management company, or security contractor.
How long do I have to file a claim after a shooting in Texas?
Texas imposes a two-year statute of limitations on both personal-injury and wrongful-death claims. If the shooting was fatal, the two-year clock runs from the date of death. If the TTCA applies — because the shooting occurred on city property and the city itself is a target — a separate, shorter notice deadline may apply. Two years is the outer limit, but the evidence that builds the case disappears in days and weeks, not years. The deadline to file is two years; the deadline to save the proof is measured in days.
What if the shooter is never caught — can I still pursue a case?
Yes. The civil case against a property owner for negligent security does not depend on the shooter being identified, prosecuted, or convicted. The civil case is about whether the property owner provided reasonable security against foreseeable crime — not about the shooter’s identity. The criminal case and the civil case are separate proceedings with separate standards and separate purposes. The criminal case seeks to punish the shooter. The civil case seeks to hold the property owner accountable for failing to protect against the foreseeable risk.
Does workers’ compensation prevent me from suing anyone else?
No. Workers’ compensation is the exclusive remedy against the employer — the city. It does not prevent a claim against any other party whose negligence contributed to the shooting. If a property owner, management company, or security contractor shares responsibility, they can be sued in tort for the full measure of damages — including pain and suffering, mental anguish, and loss of companionship, which workers’ comp does not pay. The workers’ comp carrier will have a subrogation lien on any third-party recovery, but that lien can be negotiated and managed.
What is negligent security and how does it apply to a shooting?
Negligent security is a form of premises liability. When a property owner knows — or should know — that violent crime is occurring on or near the property, the law requires the owner to take reasonable steps to protect people on the property from that foreseeable danger. Reasonable steps can include adequate lighting, functioning surveillance cameras, access control, security patrols, and working locks. When the owner does nothing — or does too little — and someone is shot, the owner can be held civilly responsible for the harm that followed. The proof is in the prior-crime history of the location and the gap between what the owner knew and what the owner did.
How much is a shooting case worth in Texas?
It depends on the facts. The range can be very wide — from approximately $250,000 at the low end to $8,000,000 or more at the high end. The value is driven by whether the shooting was fatal or non-fatal, the severity of the injury, the employee’s salary and career trajectory, the prior crime history of the location, the solvency and insurance coverage of the defendant, and whether the conduct meets the gross-negligence standard for exemplary damages. A case cannot be meaningfully valued until those facts are developed through investigation. Anyone who tells you a number before investigating is guessing.
What evidence disappears fastest after a shooting?
Surveillance footage is the fastest-dying evidence. Most commercial CCTV systems overwrite on a 7-to-30-day cycle. Once the footage is gone, it cannot be recovered. Witness memories are the next-fastest — they degrade within weeks. Police calls-for-service data and prior-incident reports take weeks to obtain through open-records requests. The property owner’s internal security logs can be destroyed unless a litigation hold is issued. A preservation letter demanding that all evidence be frozen must go out within days of the shooting, not after the criminal case resolves.
Can I pursue punitive damages in a Texas shooting case?
Yes, if the evidence supports it. Texas allows exemplary (punitive) damages upon clear-and-convincing evidence of gross negligence, malice, or fraud. In a negligent-security case, this means proving that the property owner knew about repeated prior violent incidents on the premises and took no corrective action — that the owner was consciously indifferent to the risk. Exemplary damages are subject to a statutory cap tied to the amount of economic damages. They are not automatic, and they require a higher standard of proof than ordinary negligence.
What if the shooting happened on city property?
If the shooting occurred on property owned or controlled by the city — a municipal facility, a public-works yard, a city parking lot — a claim against the city itself (beyond workers’ compensation) would be governed by the Texas Tort Claims Act. The TTCA imposes notice requirements that can be as short as six months and limits the waiver of sovereign immunity to specific categories of claims. Damages under the TTCA are capped. Whether the TTCA applies is a threshold question that depends on where the shooting occurred and who controlled the property.
Should I talk to the insurance adjuster who called me?
No. Not without your attorney. The adjuster’s job is to minimize what the company pays, and the “just checking in” call is designed to capture language that can be used against you later. The answer to any request for a recorded statement is: “I need to speak with my attorney first.” That is not adversarial — it is the same answer the adjuster would give if the positions were reversed.
How Attorney911 Evaluates Shooting and Negligent-Security Cases
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are based in Houston, and we take catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases across Texas, including the West Texas regions where this shooting occurred. We have been in practice since 2001, and we have recovered more than $50 million for injured clients and their families.
Ralph Manginello is our managing partner. He has been licensed in Texas since 1998 — 27 years of trial practice, including in federal court. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. Before he was a lawyer, he was a journalist — he was trained to find the facts, to ask the questions that no one else was asking, and to tell the truth in a way that a jury can feel. He brings that same discipline to every case. He is currently lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit in Harris County — a case that, like a shooting case, is about holding institutions accountable for the harm they allowed to happen. You can read more about Ralph here.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. He has been licensed in Texas since 2012 and is also admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Before he joined this firm, he spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to 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 surveillance works, how the IME doctor is selected, and how the delay tactics are deployed. He now uses that knowledge for injured clients. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. You can read more about Lupe here.
Our fee is contingency. We charge 33.33% if the case settles before trial and 40% if it goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The call is free. We have 24/7 live staff — not an answering service — so when you call at 2 a.m. from a hospital waiting room, a person picks up the phone.
What we do in these cases is what this page describes: we send the preservation letter the day we are retained, freezing the evidence before it disappears. We pull the crime-history data that proves foreseeability. We retain the security expert who evaluates the property against the recognized industry standards. We build the life-care plan or the economic-damages model that converts a life changed by violence into a number a jury can understand. We manage the workers’ compensation claim alongside the third-party claim, and we negotiate the subrogation lien so the family keeps what it is owed. We handle the appointment of the personal representative in a wrongful-death case. We coordinate with the employer, the comp carrier, and the investigating agency so the family can grieve without managing logistics.
If your family is facing the aftermath of a shooting in West Texas — or anywhere in Texas — we are a phone call away. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña conducts full consultations in Spanish, without an interpreter. If your family is more comfortable speaking in Spanish, call us — we will speak with you in your language, with the same depth, the same urgency, and the same commitment.
Proteja Sus Derechos — Información Crítica en Español
Si un empleado de la ciudad fue tiroteado en West Texas, su familia tiene derechos específicos bajo la ley de Texas. Aquí está lo que necesita saber ahora mismo:
El plazo es de dos años. Texas impone un plazo de dos años para presentar demandas por lesiones personales y por muerte por negligencia. Pero la evidencia desaparece mucho más rápido — las cámaras de seguridad se borran en 7 a 30 días, y los testigos olvidan en semanas. Llame a un abogado ahora, no después.
No dé una declaración grabada. Si alguien de la aseguradora llama y le pide que cuente lo que pasó en una grabación, la respuesta es: “Necesito hablar con mi abogado primero.” Esa grabación puede usarse en su contra después.
No firme nada. Si llega un cheque rápido con un formulario de liberación, no lo firme sin que un abogado lo revise. Firmar ese documento cierra el caso permanentemente.
La compensación laboral no es su única opción. Si el tiroteo ocurrió en propiedad privada y el dueño no proporcionó seguridad adecuada, usted puede tener una demanda contra el dueño de la propiedad — además de la reclamación de compensación laboral. Estas dos vías funcionan en paralelo.
Llame al 1-888-ATTY-911. La consulta es gratuita. Hablamos Español. No cobramos a menos que ganemos su caso.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case is different, and the specific facts of your situation determine which laws apply and what your case is worth. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.