Categories: Crime

Aunt Who Instructed Boy to Fire at Sonic Worker Learns Her Sentence

Share and Follow

Inset: Ashley Jasmin Marmolejo (Johnson County Jail). Background: Sonic Drive-in in Keene, Texas (Google Maps).

A 20-year-old woman is headed to prison for more than two decades after she handed her 12-year-old nephew a gun and told him to go shoot a Sonic employee who confronted her brother about peeing in the parking lot.

Ashley Jasmin Marmolejo pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 25 years in the Texas Department of Corrections for the shooting death of 32-year-old Matthew Davis, a Sonic employee, the Johnson County District Attorney”s Office said.

Marmolejo, her brother Angel Gomez, then 20, and the boy, then 12, were at the restaurant in Keene, which is some 40 miles southwest of Dallas, on May 13, 2023, when Gomez decided to relieve himself in the parking lot. Davis confronted Gomez and told him to stop as Marmolejo and the boy watched from their car.

“The argument soon became physical,” police wrote.

She handed him a gun and told him to “go” shoot Davis. The boy did just that, taking an AR-style rifle and opening fire, striking Davis several times. Cops responded to the scene and tended to Davis until medical personnel from the Keene Fire Department took over. He was flown out by helicopter to Harris Methodist Hospital, where staff pronounced him dead.

Angel Gomez, pictured at right, peed in a Sonic Drive-In parking lot, according to officers. Restaurant employee Matthew Davis, pictured left, confronted him, but a 12-year-old occupant of Gomez’s car shot and killed Davis, cops said. (Image of Davis: courtesy of GoFundMe campaign; mugshot of Gomez: Keene Police Department; screenshot: KXAS)

The boy, who has never been publicly identified, was convicted of murder and sentenced to 12 years behind bars in 2023. Gomez originally stood accused of murder, but those charges were dropped.

The state initially did not charge Marmolejo with murder but a new prosecutor was elected and he promised the family to put the case in front of a grand jury, local NBC affiliate KXAS reported. Marmolejo was indicted on a murder charge earlier this year.

Davis’ mother Leigh Miller was pleased by the outcome.

“This is justice that we’ve been waiting for,” Miller told KXAS. “Of course, with a death like this, you want them to be life in prison, but this is a good sentence for her, and we will continue to fight to keep her locked behind bars even when she comes up for parole.”

A GoFundMe campaign, started by coworkers of Davis’ mother, said Davis leaves behind a 10-year-old son. It has raised more than $29,000 of a $16,500 goal.