Eva’s Place Shooter Leaves County Jail for Prison

SAN ANGELO, TX -- Jason Scott Little was accused of shooting into Eva’s Place bar in 2015 and pleaded guilty last month to a charge of deadly conduct discharging a firearm.  District Judge Brad Goodwin sentenced Little to 12 years in prison. Little was released from the Tom Green County Jail Friday into the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to serve the remainder of his time in state prison.  

As we reported in 2015, 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.

Little had been charged with manslaughter but that charge was reduced to deadly conduct discharging a firearm in exchange for a guilty plea.  Little was represented by Evan Pierce-Jones and Todd Simons.