A 61-year-old repeat offender was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for fatally shooting a nightclub owner in 2018, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced.

“This was a violent and tragic ambush of a father and an entrepreneur,” Ogg said. “We have worked for five years to get justice for this victim’s family, and this was the right result.”

Angel Luis Mexico, 61, was convicted Tuesday of murder by a Harris County jury after seven days of trial. After the guilty verdict, the defendant opted to have the judge decide his punishment. State District Judge Kristin Guiney heard testimony from several witnesses, including Mexico, and then sentenced him to life in prison.

Mexico ambushed 42-year-old Lamonte Bush on June 29, 2018. Bush was standing outside the nightclub that he owned on Wayside, talking to his wife and 9-year-old daughter. His wife and daughter were in a parked car, and Bush was leaning into the window of the car talking to them. Mexico approached from behind and shot him in the back of the head.

Testimony throughout the trial showed that Mexico had a lengthy criminal record, including convictions for domestic violence beginning in the 1980s. Mexico is a Cuban national who testified that he was one of the criminals then-President Fidel Castro released from prison in 1980 who immigrated to the United States.

In 1981, he was sent to prison for stabbing a woman in Minnesota. When he was released, he moved to Texas and was convicted of robbery in 1983. In 1987, he fired at two police officers after robbing a convenience store and was convicted of attempted capital murder and sentenced to 25 years. After he was released, he was in and out of jail several times for violent acts before ultimately killing Bush.

Assistant District Attorney Amanda Benavides, who prosecuted the case with ADA Sepi Zimmer, said the victim was an attentive father and a conscientious small-business owner.

“Lamonte was well known and well liked in the neighborhood, and he was in front of the lounge that he had just opened a few months earlier,” Benavides said. “Angel Mexico knew that Lamonte had been involved with his adult daughter in the past and did not approve of it.”

Zimmer noted that Bush’s daughter, who was 9 years old and sitting in the front seat of her mother’s car talking to her father when she saw Mexico shoot him, had to identify the killer in court.

“It’s been a really, really hard five years on the family, especially for the victim’s daughter, who knew she would have to testify,” Zimmer said. “They have been waiting for this case to end, so they are grateful to the jury that diligently reviewed the evidence to find him guilty and to the judge for sentencing him to life. Now they can move on with their lives.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced today that recent initiatives by her office have helped lead to a 21% reduction in the criminal case backlog from the COVID-related highs of recent years. As of April 10 – the 100^th day of 2023 – the backlog has been cut to 114,242 cases, a reduction of nearly 31,000 from 2021. And the figure continues to fall.

The numbers show the office’s aggressive focus on reducing the case backlog has paid off. Ogg credited her staff for that success and specifically pointed out two recent initiatives that spurred major backlog reductions – the creation of a Homicide Division within the office and the implementation of a “triage” program.

Ogg created the Homicide Division in 2022, assigning 12 veteran prosecutors to a unit dedicated to trying languishing homicide cases. The team has aggressively pushed some of the most violent offenders’ cases to plea or trial. Some had been pending for more than four years, worsened by the pandemic and closure of the Criminal Justice Center following Hurricane Harvey.

In addition, Ogg and her senior leadership secured the funding to create an overtime program in which prosecutors meet after hours and on weekends to review more than 30,000 nonviolent, mostly victimless misdemeanor and state jail felony cases. Those cases are then considered for solutions other than incarceration.

“This backlog reduction is a welcome reward for our unending focus and hard work on resolving these cases,” Ogg said. “Most importantly, these successes lead to more victims getting resolution of their cases – and getting that resolution more quickly. And that’s the best reward of all.”