MARFA — A man showed up after midnight Wednesday at Marfa Open on 102 S. Plateau Street with a pistol, urinated off the porch, sat down and then took aim at a car that had just pulled into the parking lot, a security camera video of the incident shows. The man then fired a shot at the vehicle, waited, then fired another shot before firing once more as the car left the parking lot.
Marfa Police were notified about the incident when they pulled a woman over for a traffic stop just after midnight, and the woman reported that someone at the Marfa Open lot had fired shots at her while she sat in her car, according to a statement released by the Marfa Police Department. The officer noted a bullet hole in the car. Reports of shots fired were also called in.
After police started investigating, they pulled over a pickup truck driven by Matthew “Matty” Gray, 37, who has been recently living in Valentine. Officers found a pistol in the car, and later viewed the video of the shooting to identify Gray. Police arrested Gray and charged him with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, deadly conduct, discharge of firearm in certain municipalities, driving under the influence and unlawful carry of a firearm, according to the police statement. Presidio County Jail records show he was released on a $25,000 bond Wednesday. (This is not the same Matthew Gray as the artist who is working on sculptures west of Valentine.)
The security video was released to The Big Bend Sentinel by Jason McHenry, who runs Marfa Open. McHenry said he wanted to show that Marfa Open was not having an event or party at the time. The video shows a man that appears to be Gray sitting on an empty and quiet porch with no other sounds in the background.
McHenry said Marfa Open was not connected to Gray in any formal way, but that he had done his laundry there a couple times.
Marfa Police did not release the identity of the woman shot at by press time. However, the woman was identified by McHenry as Irlanda Vargas, 28, who is believed to live in Alpine and has previously shown work at Marfa Open. McHenry said they know her and she was coming to visit a resident artist. “She was completely shaken up after this,” he said. Vargas could not immediately be reached for comment.
McHenry said he and two others at Marfa Open had just gone to sleep when they awoke to loud popping noises. “It was over before we knew what happened,” he wrote in a statement to police. “We immediately called the police, who acted swiftly and had him in custody in a matter of minutes. Fortunately, we had video cameras that detailed the entire incident from two separate angles.”
“Matty” Gray had been living in a trailer behind the Valentine Bar, said owner Jeff Wilson, who spoke to The Sentinel on the Marfa Open porch Friday afternoon. He said he believes Gray, who he knew well, had left Valentine. Wilson and McHenry said they had no clue what motivated Gray to shoot at Vargas and that he had only known him a nice guy. Wilson and McHenry speculated that the Marfa bars had just closed, Gray could have been highly intoxicated, and he may have thought someone was after him. “He was over here,” Wilson said, pointing to a back part of the parking lot, “angled and parking in a defensive position.”
The video shows what is alleged to be Gray pulling into the parking lot then moving to a corner not captured by security cameras. Then the porch video shows him striding up with his dog, Dusty, carrying a pistol. The man is wearing a black T-shirt and a straw cowboy hat. After relieving himself and sitting down, the camera picks up a white sedan entering the lot and stopping parallel to the porch. McHenry said he later found out that Vargas was texting her friend to let him know she had arrived. The man points the pistol directly at the car — which was a fair distance away across the lot — and says, “Who’s that?” He then says, “Call out your name, you’re on private property. You’re on private property, call out your name.” He fires a shot at the sedan and again says, “Call out your name, you’re on private property.” Then he says, “Keep going. Whoever you are, keep going,” before firing a second shot that clearly hits the rear corner panel of the sedan. The sedan backs up, turning to face the exit and slowly proceeds to drive away, but the man fires a third and final shot at it.
Dusty the dog fled at the sound of the first gunshot. A cat is seen running out of the lot at the shot, but then returns, only to flee again with the other shots. McHenry said Dusty was found and returned to Valentine, but it’s unclear whether he went back to Gray.
Gray has been a regular at the Valentine bar and bartender there occasionally, according to patrons of the bar.
