Carlos Ochoa pleaded guilty to murder in the death of Michael Sherman Ross II and was sentenced to 20 years.

A guilty plea to murder and a 20-year sentence are the judgment on that count. They are not a finding about which of the three men fired. KLTV reported Wednesday that Ochoa was the last of the three to plead. The station's July account of the 2018 sentencing said prosecutors believed someone else pulled the trigger and that they did not have the forensic evidence to prove it. Wednesday's story does not say the new plea settled that question, and it does not say whether the 20 years run with the prison term he was already serving.

KLTV reported Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026, that Carlos Ochoa, 26, pleaded guilty to murder in the death of Michael Sherman Ross II and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The station reported the plea was in Judge Debby Gunter's courtroom in Tyler. It reported Ross was shot in the head during a robbery in 2017 and left in a wooded area near a mobile home park off State Highway 271 North. He survived and required 24-hour care. He died in 2024. KLTV reported the medical examiner ruled that the injuries from the shooting caused his death. A guilty plea admits the murder count the court accepted Wednesday. The 20 years are the sentence the station reported the judge imposed. KLTV's Oct. 7 story calls Ochoa 26 at that appearance. The same station's July 30 timeline also called him 26 when he was arrested on Sept. 28, 2017. Those two ages are nine years apart. The stories do not explain the difference.

KLTV's July 30 account dates the shooting to Sept. 17, 2017, near Eagle Creek Mobile Home Park off State Highway 271 North. Smith County sheriff's deputies found Ross in a wooded area with a life-threatening gunshot wound to the head. Investigators determined the shooting happened during an alleged robbery. The station reported Tarrance Reggie was taken into custody Sept. 19, Joel Camacho, then described as 31, on Sept. 26, and Ochoa on Sept. 28. All three were booked into the Smith County Jail on aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. A grand jury indicted them in December 2017 in the 114th Judicial District Court. In August 2018, KLTV reported, all three pleaded guilty to that assault and Judge Jack Skeen sentenced each of them to the maximum 20 years. Ross's mother told the court, "He's fully alert in his thoughts, but he can't talk and walk," and, "He has such big dreams, he didn't deserve this, he didn't deserve for someone who didn't know him to decide that his life didn't matter." Skeen said, "They just left him out there, slumped over, blood on his shirt," and, "All three, they just left him." That 2018 sentence was the judgment on the assault. It was not a murder conviction. Ross was still alive.

At that 2018 sentencing, KLTV reported, prosecutors said they believed Reggie organized the assault and Camacho fired the gun, and that there was not enough evidence to confirm who did what. A prosecutor said, "There's not enough forensic evidence to tell what gun the bullet came from because part of the forensic evidence is still in the victim's skull." That is what the state told a judge seven years before the murder pleas. It is not what KLTV reported Ochoa admitted on Wednesday. The Oct. 7 story does not say his plea named a shooter. It says he pleaded guilty to the murder and received 20 years. KLTV reported that after Ross died in 2024, District Attorney Jacob Putnam decided to pursue murder charges. The July 30 story spelled the district attorney's name Jacob Putman and reported that he said Ross died from the 2017 injuries. The Oct. 7 story spelled it Putnam and attributed the cause of death to the medical examiner. A grand jury indicted all three for murder in April 2026. KLTV described that count in July as first-degree felony murder. The indictment is the charging paper that Wednesday's plea resolved for Ochoa.

The other two men have already pleaded. KLTV reported Oct. 7 that Joel Camacho pleaded guilty in July and accepted 30 years, and that Tarrance Deshawn Reggie pleaded guilty in September and accepted 25 years. The July 30 story described Reggie as 28 and said John Jarvis was his lawyer. Those sentences are their judgments. They are not Ochoa's, and they do not identify, in the Oct. 7 account, which man fired. KLTV did not report whether Ochoa's new 20 years run at the same time as the 2018 assault sentence, whether they are stacked on it, or whether he was given credit for the years he has already served. A murder sentence after a guilty plea is the punishment the court imposed on that count. The years he will actually serve on top of the 2018 term are a calculation the Wednesday story did not publish.