An unsettling video has been released showing the moment a disturbed Las Vegas high school student — guilty of strangling and sexually assaulting his teacher — ambushed her before committing his heinous attack.
Jonathan Garzia-Martinez, 17, is currently serving a minimum of 16 years of a 40-year prison sentence after being found guilty in June for the vile assault on his former El Dorado High School teacher in April 2022.
Nearly two years after the attack, disturbing footage obtained by 8 News Now shows the events of the life-changing day.
Surveillance footage inside the high school shows Martinez-Garcia, then 16, wandering the halls at 1:33 p.m. on April 7, 2022.
He’s seen attempting to open a classroom door near the end of the hall but fails and starts to walk away.
Suddenly, his teacher — identified only as Sade — pops her head out of the room, and Martinez-Garcia quickly turns around and approaches the classroom.
The footage then cuts to the unhinged teen struggling with his teacher before he violently drags her back into the classroom.
The video jumps to 3:05 p.m., nearly an hour and a half after the teen launched his attack, walking out of the classroom with his head down.
The footage then changes to the Bodycam of a Clark County School District Police hunting down Garcia-Martinez later that day after the reports came in of the attack.
“Possible suspect sighting, he sees the suspect right outside of his residence right now,” the officer, who eventually arrested Garcia-Martinez, hears over the radio.
The teen was sitting in a tinted-out vehicle as the arresting officer approached.
“Hey, driver turn the car off. Turn the car off. Jonathan steps out of the car,” the CCSDPD officer commands, adding, “You know why we’re here?”
Now changed into his high school’s ROTC uniform, Gacia-Martinez exits the car and calmly says, “No” before the video ends.
During his June 2023 sentencing, the severity of his despicable acts was revealed after his teacher gave a harrowing statement while Gacia-Martinez was seen smirking during the hearing.
“Since it happened there hasn’t been a single night I haven’t dreamt of the attack,” Sade shared.
“I would wake up in a new spot and position each time knowing that he’d just drag my limp, and near lifeless body to a different part of the classroom to do whatever he so chose to do with my body, as I lay unconscious.”
“He’d beat my body so badly that I could no longer fight,” she said.
Sade told police that she came to and asked why he was attacking her, with his chilling response being he “didn’t like teachers,” so he was “getting revenge.”
The teen then choked her unconscious, and when she awoke, her pants and underwear had been pulled down while he was pouring liquid over her.
Investigators revealed that Sade said he was going to “set something on fire” before toppling a heavy bookshelf over her and sitting down on top of it while he tried slashing her wrists.
“I was being crushed to near death,” she explained.
“Sade remembers him saying, ‘Why won’t you just die?’” Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney William Rowles shared with the court during sentencing.
Garcia previously pleaded guilty to attempted murder, battery with use of a deadly weapon resulting in substantial bodily harm, and attempted sexual assault.
The teen claimed he “blacked out” during the attack but later told police he raped his teacher and remembered trying to strangle her.
“I regret what I’ve done,” Gacia-Martinez told the court in June.
“I also regret the things I should have done, but didn’t do.”
Though he apologized, his attorney argued an asthma drug he was taking called Singulair, also known as Montelukast, caused severe mood swings and delusions and is the focus of a number of lawsuits over severe mental health problems users have experienced.
“He had no history of anything but being a perfect loving kid,” his attorney, public defender Tyler Gaston, argued to the court.
Disagreeing with Gaston, Judge Kathleen Delaney wasn’t buying it and harshly sentenced the teen to 40 years in prison.
“It is the most heinous type of crime there could be,” she said.
