The March 2019 incident resulted in multiple people being hit and two suffering critical injuries.
The punishment agreement, which was reached last Thursday (May 8), covers that and five other cases over the last 15 years involving six felony and three misdemeanor crimes.
39 year old Joe Ruiz was sentenced to 20 years, of which he will have to serve at least ten years before he becomes eligible for parole.
Ruiz was also ordered for the rest of his life to stay away from the victim of felony continuous sexual abuse that happened in September 2010.
Court records show the punishment for the 2019 aggravated assault with a deadly weapon conviction also included two additional counts from that incident, July 2023 charges of felony evading arrest and misdemeanor resisting arrest, a June 2022 felony count of possessing a controlled substance and December 2016 misdemeanor charges of driving with an invalid license with a prior conviction and fleeing from a police officer.
News release from the Brazos County district attorney’s office:
On May 8, 2025, Joe Ruiz was sentenced to the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon. A Brazos County Jury found the Defendant guilty of this violent offense on January 29, 2025, after a two-day trial in the 272nd District Court. A Brazos County jury also found the defendant used a deadly weapon (his vehicle) in a way that could have caused death or serious bodily injury. This finding ensures that the defendant has to serve at least half of his sentence before he is eligible for parole.
The punishment phase of trial was set to begin on May 8, 2025 but the Defendant accepted the statutory maximum punishment before the start of the punishment trial and pled that same morning.
On March 9th 2019, the Defendant was at a downtown Bryan bar with a few of his friends. As the bar was closing around 2 am, the Defendant and two other individuals got into a fight outside of the bar. The Defendant was hit in the head with a glass bottle during the fight. A crowd intervened broke up the fight and separated the Defendant from the two other individuals.
As everyone was walking away back to their vehicles, the Defendant quickly got into his Mercedes, backed out of the parking space, and backed into the crowd of people in an apparent attempt at retaliation. Seeing this, the crowd parted and the Defendant pointed his vehicle in the direction of the crowd. He deliberately and intentionally accelerated into the crowd. The Defendant seriously injured several victims, hitting them with his vehicle and flipping them violently into the air. Multiple people were hit and two individuals sustained critical injuries.
The Jury heard evidence and saw surveillance videos of the entire incident including the initial altercation and the horrific moments of impact of the Defendant’s vehicle into the victims.
The Defendant continued to drive through the streets of Bryan after hitting the victims and left broken parts of his vehicle on the roads. The Defendant eventually parked his car in the backyard of his house, be-tween two trees and under a sheet in an attempt to conceal its whereabouts.
Victims were treated on-scene by the Bryan Fire Department as Bryan Police Officers investigated the crime.
Statement from assistant district attorneys Jessica Escue and David Kaldas: “The defendant used a motor vehicle to attack and injure multiple victims in downtown Bryan. This punishment in this case was well deserved.”