Citing insufficient evidence, the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office has dropped its case against a Stockton man accused of committing a drive-by shooting in West Sacramento that critically injured a 13-year-old girl.
Deputy District Attorney Ryan Couzens made the request to dismiss attempted murder and other charges against Sonny Rudy Martinez in court Friday, the scheduled date for the defendant’s preliminary hearing — a proceeding to determine whether there is enough evidence for a case to proceed to trial.
Martinez, 39, was arrested four days after the Oct. 24 shooting that left Alize Valadez with a gunshot wound to her head as she watched television in her grandmother’s Solano Street home.
Couzens asked that the case be dismissed without prejudice, giving prosecutors the opportunity to refile charges against Martinez at a later time, if warranted.
Judge David Reed granted the request, scheduling a Feb. 23 court date for review and potential refiling and ordering Martinez’s immediate release from the Yolo County Jail.
Martinez’s attorneys, Deputy Public Defenders Sally Fredericksen and Richard Van Zandt, declined to comment at length about the dismissal, citing the possible refiling.
“All parties agree there’s insufficient evidence,” Van Zandt said.
Couzens also would not go into specifics about the evidence his office has, but confirmed there is potential for the case to be resurrected.
“We are assessing and reassessing the situation and pursuing all potential leads,” he said.
Martinez’s attorneys have questioned the strength of the case since nearly the beginning, saying their client’s cell-phone texts indicated he was in Stockton at the time of the shooting, and that he had no motive to carry out the crime.
The probable cause that led to his arrest was contained in a sealed document, Van Zandt said at a November bail hearing in the case. The victim’s family, meanwhile, said they’d never seen or heard of Martinez prior to his arrest.
Still, Friday’s development dealt a blow to Valadez’s relatives, who met at length with Couzens and West Sacramento police detectives following the case’s dismissal.
“She deserves to have her justice,” said Hope Penunuri, the teen’s grandmother.
Valadez remains hospitalized at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, where she spent more than three weeks in a coma and has since regained consciousness, but is unable to speak or do much else on her own, her family said.
“Each day she’s a little bit better — she’s trying to come out of it,” Penunuri said, noting that Valadez can communicate with thumbs-up and thumbs-down signs. “But she’s not going to be the same.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene