Someone yelled ‘Drop the bag’ before teen was killed in Fort Worth hotel, warrant says
Paul Ramirez told his two friends on Aug. 11 before he entered the Magnuson Hotel in Fort Worth that if he did not return in five minutes, they should call police.
The 19-year-old Ramirez never made back out of the hotel.
Ramirez was shot and killed in room number 302 in the hotel during a marijuana sale that went bad, according to a warrant.
Video surveillance at the hotel obtained by Fort Worth detectives showed Ramirez enter the room and a minute later two suspects also entered. Seconds later, gunshots went off.
Ramirez was later found dead in the hotel room, and the suspects were gone, according to the warrant obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Thursday.
But detectives would soon have the name of one suspects because Map Elijah Bieng signed his name to a hotel transaction.
Bieng, 18, was arrested a few days after the fatal shooting, and Samario Montreal Robertson, 19, of Fort Worth, was taken into custody last week. A third suspect in the case has not been arrested.
Bieng was charged with capital murder on Aug. 25, while Robertson also faces a charge of capital murder.
Bieng and Robertson both remained in jail Thursday on $750,000 bond. Robertson also was being held on aggravated robbery charges on other cases, according to jail records.
The warrant written by Fort Worth Detective J.W. Galloway gave this account of the shooting:
Ramirez and two friends drove to the Magnuson Hotel, 6700 Fossil Bluff Drive, on the afternoon of Aug. 11 so that Ramirez could sell some marijuana.
The two friends told detectives that didn’t know who Ramirez was going to sell to, but Ramirez had coordinated the deal on a phone app.
Before he left his car in the hotel parking lot, Ramirez told his friends that if he had not returned in five minutes, to call police.
Ramirez went into the hotel room armed with a .380-caliber handgun, carried a backpack and called one of his friends through Facebook Messenger and left the connection open as he entered the room, according to the warrant.
One of Ramirez’s friends heard someone say, “Drop the bag,” the sounds of struggle and then multiple gunshots.
Ramirez’s two friends, one of them armed with a gun, ran up to the hotel room, and saw a man standing in the hallway who told them he had nothing to do with what had just happened.
One of Ramirez’s friends looked in the hotel room and saw Ramirez lying on the floor. The two left the hotel and one of them called 911.
Ramirez died from a gunshot wound to his neck, according to a ruling by officials at the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.
A hotel surveillance video showed Ramirez enter the hotel room at about 3 p.m. on Aug. 11. At 3:01 p.m., a man later identified as Map Bieng and a second man also entered the room.
Seconds later, the two suspects can be seen fleeing the room, but at 3:03 p.m., Bieng and two suspects re-entered the hotel room, and left seconds later with Ramirez’s backpack.
Hotel video shows Bieng and the two other suspects are last ween walking eastbound through a pasture in the back of the hotel.
