SHARE Bryant Watts Arron Jones

By Rashda Khan, Rashda.Khan@gosanangelo.com

By Rashda Khan

Rashda.Khan@gosanangelo.com

325-659-8381

What began as a routine traffic stop turned into a high-speed chase that led from Menard to Eola and ended with the fleeing vehicle crashing into Los Ruiz B.B.Q., a small family-owned restaurant and bar, on Saturday.

The two men in the car turned out to be fugitive murder suspects from Houston. Bryant Watts, 28, and Arron Jones, 31, were apprehended and charged with capital murder in connection with a fatal shooting in the Houston area earlier that day.

Watts also had two open warrants ­— one for parole violation and one for probation violation — both from Dallas. He was also charged with evading arrest with a motor vehicle and unauthorized use of a vehicle — both felony charges — by the Menard County Sheriff’s Department.

The men are being held at the Menard County Jail with no bond.

“We’ve had pursuits before, but this is the first time we got a (murder) confession at the scene,” said Chief Deputy Burl Hagler with the Menard County Sheriff’s Department, who discovered evidence in the car that made him suspicious and led to the confession. “They should have wrecked a long time before they got to that town.”

The entire incident was full of surprises.

Both suspects are accused of killing Philip Frank Panzica, 27, of Houston and stealing his fiancée’s Kia Sorrento, according to information released by the Houston Police Department. The shooting occurred about 5 a.m. at 9220 Richmond Avenue.

The victim, Panzica, made national headlines last month when he was arrested on suspicion of having sex on a Las Vegas Ferris wheel.

Panzica and Jones were at an adult entertainment club, the release read. Later, Panzica’s fiancée, a dancer at the club, left work and looked for Panzica in the parking lot. Jones approached and directed her to the car. She got into the passenger seat, while Jones and another black male (Watts) sat in the rear passenger seats.

A little later, Watts shot Panzica several times with a handgun, according to the HPD, and the suspects dumped Panzica’s body by the road and made the fiancée get out of the car. After that, they drove away in her vehicle. They also had her purse containing a large amount of cash and other belongings, the HPD said.

Deputy Hagler spotted the black Kia at 11:21 a.m. in Menard County and attempted to stop it for a speeding violation, but it turned into a high-speed chase. The car was racing between 120 and 140 miles per hour, Hagler said, and passing in no-passing zones and on the shoulders.

The traffic light at Eden started changing just as the suspects and Concho County Deputy Cody Capps, who had by now joined the chase, passed through. Hagler had to stop for safety. Game Warden Lane Pinckney helped with traffic control and joined the race after Eden.

“Sometimes in a dangerous chase like this, innocent people get hurt,” Hagler said, adding that fortunately no one was hurt — at least during the long chase.

The Kia blew a tire right before Eola, while still going about 120 mph. It hit a telephone pole in Eola, followed by a fence in front of Los Ruiz B.B.Q., before slamming sideways into the restaurant’s front rock wall. The crash took out the glass front door and about three front windows, said Richard Ruiz, president of Los Ruiz B.B.Q., L.L.C. He said this happened right before the lunch rush

Dalilah Rodriguez, Ruiz’s sister and a resident of Miles, had come in to help wait tables. Her 77-year-old mother, Clara Ruiz, who works as a prep cook, and her father, who is part-owner, were also at the restaurant. Business was already off to a good start — with the morning coffee crowd come and gone, and the restaurant already working on takeout orders.

“We had a man sitting there waiting for his takeout order minutes before, and he’d just left,” Rodriguez said. “So it was just us.”

Her father, Daniel Ruiz, was hungry and asked for a brisket plate. Rodriguez had just settled him at a table next to the front wall and stepped away to get him some water. Her mother was in the kitchen getting some bread. He’d started eating.

There was a loud explosion.

“When I turned around, my daddy was flying through the air,” Rodriguez said. The impact lifted the 80-year-old man and his chair into the air. He landed while still sitting in the chair. “I have never seen my daddy so pale,” she said.

Her father thought a bomb had gone off. There was dirt, dust and glass all over. She ran to her father as he started collapsing and picked him up by the shoulders, thinking “he’s got to be broken.”

Rodriguez, who is a teacher’s aide at Miles Elementary, had recently undergone training on how to respond in case of active shooters and other emergencies. Lessons from the training came back to her and helped Rodriguez handle the situation.

Afraid that the building would collapse, Rodriguez and her mother helped Daniel up and exited from door on the east side of the restaurant. “We turned the corner and faced another nightmare,” she said. “We were surrounded by cops with their guns out. One of them was yelling at us to get on the ground.”

Both mother and daughter dropped to the ground, huddling around Daniel’s limp form. Rodriguez remembers a lot of law enforcement officers, police dogs — and then the two suspects on their knees.

“They were looking at us,” she said. “And we were looking at them.”

After the ordeal was over, Daniel refused emergency transport but went to the emergency room with his family. He sustained a cut when his legs hit the table, but was for the most part OK.

“How could he get hit like that and be OK?” Rodriguez still wonders. “But he was.

“My mama and I thought he was going to die in this, but he’s here,” she said. “It had to be the hand of God. Without God, he’d be gone.”