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Background: Surveillance camera footage from inside the gas station shop where Ye Myint Aung was attacked on May 23 (Harris County Sheriff’s Office). Inset: Lansselo Martinez (Harris County Sheriff’s Office).
A Texas man was arrested for allegedly beating another man to death at a gas station, possibly because he believed the alleged victim threw a beer bottle at him.
Lansselo Martinez, 22, was taken into custody on Wednesday, two weeks after the beating death of 38-year-old Ye Myint Aung. In a Facebook post, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said that Martinez attacked Aung on the morning of May 23, hitting him in the head at least 20 times. According to surveillance video from in and around the store attached to the gas station, Aung reportedly staggered outside the building and collapsed.
Twelve hours later, a friend found him unconscious and called 911.
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Aung was brought to the hospital but died on May 25. According to court documents obtained by Houston ABC station KTRK, the Harris County Coroner’s Office alerted authorities to a delayed death that they had ruled a homicide.
After reviewing hours of surveillance video, Harris County detectives questioned several witnesses in connection with the beating that was seen on the video between Aung and an unidentified man in a black shirt.
According to KTRK’s reporting on the documents, Martinez and an unnamed friend were seen on camera arriving at the gas station. At some point, they both interacted with Aung.
When Martinez and his friend went to drive away, a beer bottle that had been on the hood of the car fell off. Martinez, according to police, may have believed that someone threw the bottle at him. He started confronting other patrons at the gas station before allegedly turning his anger toward Aung and beginning his fatal attack.
His friend told police that he had put the bottle there himself.
In an interview with KTRK, Aung’s friend Lakisha Wilks said that 12 hours later, at around 9:30 p.m., she went to the gas station to buy tacos. When she arrived, she saw Aung on the ground and said that she knew something was “definitely wrong.”
Others told her that Aung had been in the spot she found him since 9:30 that morning and she called 911. But after 12 hours without help, it was too late. Aung was pronounced dead on May 25 from blunt force trauma.
Wilks told KTRK, “He could have been saved, I truly believed. He could have been saved! I didn’t get there until 9:30 at night.”
Martinez was booked into the Harris County Jail on $500,000 bond after being charged with murder. His next court date is scheduled for July 29.
