Surveillance video has emerged of a 17-year-old’s attempt to rape and strangle his Las Vegas teacher — an ambush for which the teenager will be spending 16 to 40 years behind bars after being sentenced in June.
In the April 2022 video, obtained via a public records request by 8 News Now, former El Dorado High School student Jonathan Martinez-Garcia, then 16, can be seen wandering the halls and trying to enter a locked classroom.
When he can’t get into the room, he starts walking back down the hall before doing an about-face. The teacher, identified only as Sade, pokes her head out of the classroom.
Sade can be seen struggling with Martinez-Garcia before she is pulled back into the room.
There, she was brutally attacked by the student, according to prosecutors.
(Video: YouTube)
During his sentencing, prosecutors said Sade was knocked unconscious, according to DailyMail.com. She awoke to find her underwear pulled down and Martinez-Garcia threatening to burn her alive.
“Can’t you die already?” he asked as he was attacking her.
The student used a cord to strangle Sade from behind and cut her wrists.
“I would wake up in a new spot and position each time, knowing that he had just dragged limp, my near lifeless body into a different part of the classroom to do whatever he so chose to do with my body as I lay unconscious,” Sade recalled during her attacker’s sentencing. “He had beaten my body so badly that I could no longer fight.”
An hour and a half after he is seen entering the classroom, Martinez-Garcia can be seen leaving the school with his head down.
Clark County School District Police bodycam video, also obtained by 8 News Now, shows the moment Martinez-Garcia was spotted later that day by officers.
The teenager was seen by the school officer in a vehicle near Lind Lane and Bonanza Road.
“Possible suspect sighting, he sees the suspect right outside of his residence right now,” the officer who ultimately arrested Martinez-Garcia said over the radio.
According to 8 News Now, the violent attack “led lawmakers to pass several new school safety bills during this past legislative session.”
“This made that easier for teachers and administrators to expel or suspend students for violent behavior,” according to the report.
Martinez-Garcia “pleaded guilty in April to attempted murder, attempted sexual assault and battery with use of a deadly weapon resulting in substantial bodily harm,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported following the teen’s sentencing in June.
During the sentencing hearing, Martinez-Garcia apologized for his deeds and for failing to ask for the help he needed.
“I regret what I’ve done,” he said. “I also regret the things I should have done, but didn’t do.”
Martinez-Garcia’s public defender, Tyler Gaston, blamed his behavior on “severe side effects of an asthma medication, which Gaston said caused mood changes, night terrors and hallucinations,” the Review-Journal reported. “Before taking the medication Singulair, also known by the generic name Montelukast, Martinez Garcia was a caring teenager who earned good grades in school, participated in ROTC and won a robotics award, Gaston said.”
“The company that created Singulair is currently facing multiple lawsuits alleging it was aware the drug could affect the brain and cause psychiatric problems,” the paper noted.
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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