Austin mother, her 2 girls shot at 28 times; shooter gets plea deal

AUSTIN, Texas - A mother and her two little girls said their lives will never be the same after they were shot. The gunman was eventually given a plea deal that the family doesn’t agree with.

"I think that bad man should stay in jail for a long time for what he did to me," 10-year-old Mila said.

Mila, her older sister, and mother were sitting in their car on February 3, 2021.

"We received 28 bullets in my car," the girls’ mother Melinda Hipolito said.

Hipolito said she was trying to help her sister out of a domestic violence situation in Northwest Austin when the man her sister was with started shooting at them.

"It wasn’t until he stopped about 3 feet in front of my car, got out, reloaded, and emptied the second clip into the driver's side, so I then realized we were being shot multiple times," Hipolito said.

Mila took a bullet to the forehead.

"She was bleeding a lot, a piece of her head was missing," 12-year-old Scarlett said.

"My mom said, ‘Mila, stay with me' and Scarlett said that too, and mom said ‘say your ABCs, say your ABCs’, ABCDEFJ, and I tried my best and guns were shooting, like bullets," Mila said.

Scarlett was shot through both back legs and Hipolito was hit in the collar bone.

"It was the most traumatic thing I’ve ever been through, ever," Hipolito said.

As they were trying to recover, the shooter was on the loose. Devon Alexander Loper was captured by the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force about a month later in Corpus Christi. Court documents said Loper admitted to the shooting and said he shot at the car because he believed Hipolito had arrived with other individuals to assault him. 

Loper was given a 12-year plea deal last year. Hipolito said that’s nothing close to what Loper deserves.

"Anything under 20 years would have been spit in the face," Hipolito said. "We would have at least got a chance to get our bearings and recover, and they would have had the opportunity to sit here and digest and recover from what’s happened to them and given the fact that this is a short sentence and maybe paroled here, we constantly have to look behind our backs now."

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Loper could be eligible for parole after serving six years. The girls will be in their teens.

"They’re going to have to be fearful in a couple of years that he may come and finish what he initially started," Hipolito said.

The family blames the Travis County District Attorney.

"His job is supposed to be protecting people, and he won’t let people get their justice," Scarlett said.

"I think that he’s a bad man that lets criminals go," Mila said.

"We’re supposed to put people away and keep society safe and that’s not happening anymore," Hipolito said.

Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Texas is a minimum sentence of 5 years and up to 99 or life. The district attorney’s office said in a statement, "This sentence was more than twice the average for these charges in the past two administrations at the DA's office."

"This isn’t justice. This isn’t fair," Hipolito said.

"We are sorry that the victims in this case had to be victims at all.  Our office’s prosecutors carefully evaluated this case, and we believe that while the 12-year prison sentence the defendant received will never make the victims whole, it is a step forward," the Travis County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.