Brandon Cruz sentenced to life without parole in Sandy Cervantes slaying
A 35-year-old man was sentenced Thursday morning to life in prison without parole after admitting to the slaying of a woman whose remains were found three years ago in an abandoned home in Hockley County 10 months after she was abducted and shot to death during a robbery.
Brandon Cruz appeared before District Judge John McClendon and pleaded guilty to a count of capital murder in the June 2019 slaying of 35-year-old Sandy Cervantes.
Cruz admitted to shooting and killing Cervantes in the course of robbing her. He faced life in prison without parole or the death penalty. However as part of his plea, he was spared a death sentence and will be imprisoned for the rest of his life.
Two unrelated aggravated robbery charges filed against him were also dismissed.
Cruz's was charged in December 2022 with capital murder after a nearly two-year investigation by the Lubbock Metropolitan Special Crimes Unit. At the time, Cruz was already in jail on an unrelated July 2019 armed robbery during which a man was shot and injured.
A second suspect, 30-year-old Paublo Reyes, who has also been at the jail since July 2019, was served a warrant for aggravated robbery for allegedly robbing Cervantes at gunpoint.
Cervantes was initially reported missing by her family in February 2020 - about seven months after investigators believed she was killed.
A probable cause affidavit filed with the arrest warrant indicated a ballistics report links Cruz to Cervantes' slaying and shed more light on what homicide investigators believe were the last moments of her life.
Robbery turned deadly
Investigators with the Lubbock Metropolitan Special Crimes Unit believe Cervantes' vehicle ran out of fuel on June 20, 2019 near a gas station in the 1500 block of 34th Street. A man who was helping Cervantes that night told police he pulled into the gas station parking lot to help fetch her some gas and was assaulted by two men who tied him up, forced him in the trunk of his vehicle and took his wallet, which contained his girlfriend's credit card.
The man said it took him an hour to escape his trunk and by then, Cervantes, her vehicle and his attackers were gone.
Four days later, Cervantes' Saturn Vue was found engulfed in flames in the 1000 block of Ceasar E. Chavez Drive. The vehicle was largely destroyed by the fire, the warrant states. Two days before, her purse was found in a dumpster in Abernathy.
Meanwhile, Lubbock police identified Cruz, Reyes, and Joseph Sanchez, in connection with two, July 2, 2019 armed robberies in which one person was shot.
In the first robbery a man told police he was robbed at gunpoint and the suspects tried to force him in the trunk of his car. However, the man escaped but the robbers stole his vehicle and his property.
Police believe the men also stopped a motorist at a traffic light at University Avenue and 50th Street, entered his pickup truck and told him to drive to an ATM. The man told police he was shot when he ran away at the ATM.
The suspects then left the area in the man's truck, which was later recovered.
In that case police collected a Hi-Point model JCP Smith & Wesson .40 caliber semiautomatic pistol. Police also searched Cruz's home and found a credit card that belonged to the girlfriend of the man who was attacked while helping Cervantes in June 2019.
In February 2020, Cervantes' family filed a missing persons report.
Two months later, the Lubbock Metropolitan Special Crimes Unit and the Lubbock Police Department Forensic Investigation Unit traveled to Hockley County to help the sheriff's office there investigate human remains found in an abounded house.
A forensic investigator found in the home's kitchen a bullet that had human tissue.
In October 2020, the Lubbock Police Department issued a news release seeking the public's help finding Cervantes. The man who was helping Cervantes in June called police saying he recognized the missing woman. He told investigators that after he was placed in the trunk of his car he could hear the two men force Cervantes to go with them.
He said he heard Cervantes say "Ow" before a vehicle sped off. He said he believed at the time that the robbers released Cervantes and she went back to her family. But he said he called police after seeing the news reports of Cervantes' disappearance.
The man was re-interviewed by police in November 2020 and identified Cruz and Reyes through a photo line up as the men who attacked him that night. He said he was 85 percent sure that one of the men was Cruz and was 80 percent sure the other man was Reyes, according to the warrant.
The next month, investigators spoke with Cruz and Reyes. Reyes denied any involvement in the robbery or in Cervantes' disappearance.
Cruz, on the other hand, boasted about manipulating Reyes into helping him rob the man who was helping Cervantes. However, he said he told a woman at the scene, who investigators believe to be Cervantes, to leave and she left in her vehicle. He said he stole the woman's phone to prevent her from calling the police.
However, in January 2021, Lubbock police officials said the human remains found were identified as Cervantes' after a forensic odontologist compared Cervantes’ dental records to the teeth of the remains.
A forensic scientist with the Texas Department of Public Safety also compared the bullet found with Cervantes' remains and linked it to the gun found in aggravated robberies that Cruz and Reyes were accused in.
Meanwhile, another witness told police Reyes told her that he and Cruz picked up a woman, tied her up and put her in the trunk of a car. She said Reyes told her they shot the woman and burned her vehicle.
She said Reyes said the woman cried and begged them to let her go. She said Reyes was upset with Cruz because he didn't want to do it.
Police investigators also obtained cell phone phone tower location data that indicates Cruz's phone was in the vicinity of the gas station where Cervantes was abducted, the house in Hockley County where her remains were discovered and where her car was set on fire, according to the warrant.
Prosecutors could not comment on the case as Reyes' case remains pending.
After his sentence was announced, Cervantes' sister confronted Cruz, telling him that he didn't have the right to take her sister's life.
"You didn't even know her," she told him. "How dare you!"
Racheal Cervantes told Cruz that his actions robbed her sister's three daughter of a mother.
"My mother didn't deserve her daughter to be taken away from her," she said. "I didn't deserve to have my sister taken away from me."
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Suspect in Sandy Cervantes killing pleads guilty to capital murder
