Girl, 11, recounts night of mom’s slaying

By Matt Pordum (contact)

Thursday, Dec. 2, 2004 | 11:04 a.m.

A Mexican citizen accused of kidnapping and killing his estranged wife in front of their 11-year-old daughter and two police officers will stand trial, Justice of the Peace Karen Bennett-Haron ruled on Wednesday.

Carlos Ortiz is scheduled for arraignment on Dec. 8 before District Judge Nancy Saitta for the killing of his wife, Maria Ortiz, on Sept. 24. He faces the death penalty if convicted.

The couple's daughter, Ruby Ortiz, showed strength beyond her years as she recalled the night of her mother's death, which began innocently enough with her father picking her up from a friend's birthday party.

Ruby said her father arrived with "beer on his breath" and was "kind of angry" as he drove her to his home for what was to be the beginning of a two-week stay with him. Upon arriving at his home she said Carlos Ortiz started an argument and repeatedly asked her if her mother "was seeing anyone."

When Ruby told her father she "didn't know" he slapped her in the face and called her mother, telling her to come pick her up. After her mother arrived, Ruby said, she went inside to get her things and returned to find her father "pointing a gun at her (Maria Ortiz) while she was lying on the floor."

Ruby, who avoided eye contact with her father Wednesday and held back emotion, said her mother cried out for her to "call the cops," but before she could make contact with police her father "took the phone away."

She said her father then pointed the gun at her mother's head and began asking her the name of the man she was dating. Maria Ortiz finally gave in and told Ruby to tell her father she was dating a man she worked with at the Luxor, where Carlos Ortiz worked as well.

Ruby said her father "got angrier" and after he "heard the police coming" he forced her mother into the driver's seat of her car, put herself in the backseat and he took the passenger seat. She said he then proceeded to give her mother directions.

She said her mother was crying as she followed her father's orders and upon seeing a police car in the distance "tried to crash into" it to "get their attention." She said the "cops got out and they saw the gun (Carlos Ortiz had pointing at her mother) and began talking to her father as they tried to get closer to the car.

Before they could get too close, Ruby said her father shot her mother in the head.

Metro Police Officer Ronald Rasmussen said he was finishing a traffic citation at the 400 block of North Eastern Avenue when he "heard a horn and a muffled scream." He said he turned toward the noise and saw a car approaching and almost hit his patrol car.

He said when the car stopped he saw Carlos Ortiz holding his wife by the hair in his lap and before the officers could even react he "took a gun out, put it to her head and shot her once."

Rasmussen said he told Ortiz to "drop the weapon" and Ruby, who was covered in her mother's blood, managed to jump into the front seat of the car "to cover her Mom." After ordering Carlos Garcia to "drop the weapon" five or six times he finally threw it out of the car and the officers took him in to custody.

Ortiz is being held at the Clark County Detention Center on no bail. He has been arrested on allegations of domestic violence, according to authorities.