On Friday morning 36-year-old Veneranda Martinez was murdered by her estranged husband outside a gas station in Austin Texas. But the husband, 43-year-old Florencio Felix Barron wasn’t even supposed to be in the country; he had been deported in 2016 after being convicted of sexual assault of a child.
Martinez had been selling tamales outside the East Austin gas station and had her three children in the car with her. Barron approached the car, and shot her before walking around to the front of the car and turning the gun on himself.
Martinez had been trying to protect her daughter who witnessed the shooting and was holding her mother’s hand as she died.
Barron and Martinez were both pronounced dead at the scene at 5:45 a.m. and the Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office will perform autopsies to establish officially how they died.
Martinez made several calls to the Austin police saying that Barron had been stalking her.
In 2016, Principal Lupe Velasquez, reported that a parent had come onto Allison Elementary School grounds and groped a student in the hallway. The student told school officials about it, but it was also caught on camera.
Barron was deported after being found guilty of sexual assault of the ten-year-old, at a South Austin elementary school.
The investigation of the murder case was slightly complicated by the fact that when police arrived at the scene, the murder weapon could not be found.
Someone who saw the shooting incident told police that he saw two homeless men approach the body right after the incident but he could not see what they were doing.
The service station surveillance cameras shows someone approaching the body and then quickly leaving again. Based on a still capture from these recordings, 47-year-old Christopher Douglas Kempf, was detained on 5:15 p.m. on Friday, after a report of trespassing.
Kempf admitted to having taken the weapon with the intent to sell it. It was still covered with blood and had a live round in it.
