Man Charged With Eva's Place Manslaughter Moves Closer to Jury Trial

SAN ANGELO, TX – Jason Scott Little, 30, charged with manslaughter after a bar shooting on Feb. 1, 2015, appeared at the Tom Green County Courthouse Thursday afternoon for a pre-trial.

On the night of 2015 post-Superbowl revelry, Emergency Medical Services were called out to the formally-known Eva’s Place on the 1002 block of Martin Luther King Blvd. to rush a shooting victim to Shannon Medical Center.

San Angelo Police Department officer Tina Burks was the first to arrive on scene that night at 9:11 p.m., a complaint filed with the court states. Upon entering, she found victim Bertha Vasquez lying on the floor near the bar, struck and suffering from a gunshot wound.

A patron inside the bar then turned and put a spent bullet in the officer’s hand. It was a bullet he said he’d retrieved from the top of the bar that is now believed to be the one that, all would learn later that evening, claimed Vasquez’s life.

On the other side of town, minutes after the shooting, Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Alan Dykstra was conducting a traffic stop on Little.  He was behind the wheel of a black Dodge Charger and was suspected of driving while intoxicated.

SAPD officers responded to the traffic stop and conducted a search on the vehicle. Police located a Smith and Wesson .40 caliber handgun under the front passenger seat. Police also located a magazine filled with bullets of the same brand and caliber of those used in the Eva’s Place shooting.

SAPD Det. Lynn Dye tied another vehicle to the crime when he located a gray 2012 Toyota Tundra that was registered to Little. In the bed of the truck, Dye found another .40 caliber bullet casing in the same brand as the others. A search warrant for the vehicle was executed on Feb. 5.

The truck also made an appearance on the night of the murder, when it was captured leaving the area of Eva’s Place around the time of the shooting on surveillance video from a building in the 900 block of MLK, the complaint states.

Little was booked into the Tom Green County Jail on Feb. 2 for DWI, unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, and a parole violation.

Later in the investigation, a test was conducted at a DPS crime lab in Lubbock confirming the bullet shell from the bar had been fired form the pistol found in Little’s vehicle.

The manslaughter charge facing Little was added following the confirmation that his gun had discharged the bullet that struck the victim. His bond was set at $250,000. 

Today, Little sat before the 391st Judicial District Judge Brad Goodwin accompanied by Defense Attorneys Evan Pierce-Jones and Todd Simmons. District Attorney John Best represented the State.

Best made three requests to the court:

• An amendment to the indictment, to replace the words “shooting her with a deadly weapon,” to “discharging a deadly weapon, to-wit: a firearm, at or in the direction of an occupied building.”
• A motion requiring the defense council to disclose their Expert Witnesses, as the same has been done by the State with their Expert Witnesses.
• A motion to have both charges, the manslaughter and unlawful possession of firearm, be combined into the same charge.

All three motions were confirmed by both councils and approved by Judge Goodwin.

The Defense submitted a motion asking for the State to turn over all the specifics of the DNA, firearm residue, and other forensic tests performed by the DPS in this case. The motion was 200 pages in length, Pierce-Jones confirmed to the court.

For the purpose of saving time, Judge Goodwin asked the attorneys to meet outside the courtroom on another day to discuss what motions could be passed and what would be contested by the State.  A separate hearing will take palace to discuss the contested motions before the court.

“I appreciate both sides for [agreeing] to do this,” Judge Goodwin said. “I think it helps keep everyone focused as we go forward with the trial.”  

After no more motions were presented, Goodwin recessed the court. Little remained in the courthouse to finalize other motions with his case.

The next pre-trial date is set for July 17, less than a month away from the Jury Trial scheduled for Aug. 14.