Footage shows Medina County sheriff’s deputy shoot handcuffed teen in eye with high-propulsion pepper spray gun

Oct 14, 2024

Dillon Collier, Investigative Reporter

Joshua Saunders, Photojournalist

CASTROVILLE, Texas – A Medina County sheriff’s deputy fired a high-propulsion pepper spray gun into the eye of a handcuffed teenager while he sat in the back of a patrol vehicle, body-worn and in-car camera footage obtained by KSAT Investigates shows.

The hours of footage from the June 2023 incident, released by the Medina County District Attorney’s Office earlier this summer, shows now-former deputy Jonathan Nunemaker becoming increasingly agitated as teenage robbery suspect Branden Sanchez kicked and head-butted the inside of Nunemaker’s patrol vehicle following a late-night traffic stop.

Nunemaker was indicted by a grand jury weeks after the encounter and then was convicted in May on two felony counts of aggravated assault by a public servant.

Prosecutors have said Sanchez suffered traumatic, permanent injuries to his left eye, resulting in blindness “that is unlikely ever to resolve.”

Nunemaker’s body-worn camera footage begins as he pulled over Sanchez in the parking lot of a gas station along U.S. Highway 90 in Castroville after the teen was seen driving erratically.

Sanchez, then 17, followed Nunemaker’s commands to get out of the vehicle, back towards the deputy and then get on the ground.

A minor female, identified as Sanchez’s girlfriend, was a passenger in the vehicle and was detained and then later released without incident, the footage shows.

A Castroville police officer who responded to the scene also recorded well over an hour of footage on a body-worn camera.

Law enforcement on scene quickly confirmed that the BMW driven by Sanchez had been stolen from a robbery in San Antonio several hours earlier.

Sanchez, who was later criminally charged in connection to the robbery, repeatedly struck the inside of Nunemaker’s patrol vehicle in order to get the deputy’s attention.

“Kick my f***ing door again, you’re going to get hemmed up,” Nunemaker told Sanchez less than 10 minutes after putting the handcuffed teen in the back of the vehicle.

Sanchez continued to strike the inside of the vehicle as Nunemaker attempted to inventory the stolen BMW, which contained bags of drugs packaged for sale and a pellet gun resembling an AR-style rifle.

WARNING: The following video contains both graphic footage and language

After the seventh interruption by Sanchez, Nunemaker is seen on video forcibly placing the teen back in his seat.

“Flex motherf***er. I dare you,” Nunemaker said.

Moments later, Nunemaker pulled out his department-issued pepper spray gun, walked around the patrol vehicle and said, “I’m going to hit him now. F*** it,” the footage shows.

Nunemaker then opened the back driver’s side door to the vehicle and said, “Hey.”

As Sanchez looked to his left, Nunemaker discharged the weapon, causing a pepper spray solution to strike Sanchez in the eye.

The teen can be seen screaming in pain and asking for help.

Nunemaker can be heard radioing for paramedics to come to the scene to provide the teen medical attention.

Nunemaker told a sergeant on scene minutes later, “I haven’t heard him kicking my windows. Well, you know, it’s the great equalizer isn’t it?”

The deputy drove Sanchez to the hospital after the teen was treated by paramedics.

The footage ends as a doctor at the hospital attempts to reduce swelling in Sanchez’s eye in order to examine the extent of his injuries.

“The distance from which the shot was placed was definitely way too close,” said Chris Heitman, sheriff of Maries County, Missouri.

Heitman runs the statewide less lethal instructor program for sheriff’s deputies in Missouri.

“I can argue with a certain level of force, but that level rose way too high with that type of deployment with that type of percussion weapon,” Heitman said.

“A lot of it was emotion. The officer was acting on emotion. You could tell he was getting extremely frustrated, by the video. And he acted out of emotion rather than the training he was probably provided,” said Heitman, who also questioned Nunemaker’s decision to fire the weapon into a closed space.

A day after the incident, Castroville police officers who were at the scene informed their chain of command that Sanchez may have suffered serious injuries during his arrest.

Leadership at the Medina County Sheriff’s Office was then notified and the Texas Rangers launched a probe into Nunemaker’s actions 10 days after the encounter.

The investigation determined that Nunemaker’s weapon was approximately 3.6 feet away from Sanchez’s face when it was fired, much closer than the recommended minimum distance of seven feet in order to fire the weapon safely.

The pepper spray solution from the JPX-model weapon was discharged at over 400 mph and measured at over 4 million Scoville units, prosecutors said.

A booking photo of Sanchez taken after the incident showed heavy swelling to his left eye and cuts on his face, which was mostly covered in a green solution.

In mid-July 2023, less than a month after the incident, Nunemaker was indicted on two first-degree felony charges of aggravated assault by a public servant.

He separated employment from the sheriff’s office days after being indicted, Texas Commission on Law Enforcement records show.

At trial in May, a jury deliberated less than an hour before convicting Nunemaker on both counts of felony assault.

The jury gave Nunemaker seven years probation and he is now ineligible to maintain a peace officer’s license in Texas.

Nunemaker appealed his convictions to the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio but dismissed the appeal late last month, court records show.

His attorney for the short-lived appeal declined to comment to KSAT.

Sanchez was given six years deferred adjudication in the San Antonio robbery case after pleading no contest in late January, Bexar County court records show.

Sanchez told KSAT via telephone this week the incident has negatively impacted his life.

“I might have been in the wrong for arguing with him. Shooting me from that close of a distance was completely wrong. Now I have to live with these things that he had done to me,” said Sanchez.

He said his whole face went numb after being shot with the solution, then felt a throbbing pain and then excruciating pain.

Sanchez said he continues to have occasional throbbing in his eye 15 months after the incident and plans to have surgery to hopefully gain back some of the vision in his eye.

Medina County Sheriff Randy Brown did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment for this story.

Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.

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