Midland teenager faces 30 years in prison for murder

MIDLAND, Texas (KOSA) – Midland County District Attorney Laura Nodolf says a 17-year-old Midland man was sentenced to 30 years in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to murder.

Aaron Olivares Duran was charged in 2022 with the murder of 19-year-old Jayshun Anders.

Duran was fifteen years old at the time of the murder. After presenting evidence of his maturity and the seriousness of the crime, Judge Mark Dettman certified Duran as an adult in June 2023.

Duran was charged with murder in August 2023 in 238th Judicial District Court.

On November 26, 2024, Duran pleaded guilty to murder before District Court Judge Elizabeth Leonard and chose her to determine the sentence.

First-degree murder carries a penalty of five to ninety-nine years or life, with the possibility of parole.

After taking evidence on Monday, Judge Leonard’s sentence was: thirty years in the institutional division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The evidence presented at trial showed that the defendant and three other juveniles arrived at Anders’ apartment in the early hours of June 26, 2022.

Two of the teens approached the door while two teens, including Duran, stayed out of sight.

As soon as Anders opened the door, the teenagers opened fire. Anders was hit and died from his injuries.

Midland police collected sixteen shell casings and presented photographs of the bullet holes in the apartment’s windows, walls and doors as evidence to the judge.

During the investigation, Detective Doroteo Arguijo reviewed and presented over 9,000 pages of Instagram and Facebook records of Duran and another juvenile plotting the robbery and/or murder of Jayshun Anders beginning in February 2022.

The other teenager involved in the messages was killed in another shooting in July 2022. After Mr. Anders’ murder, Duran and his family moved to Arizona before he was arrested and incarcerated at the Culver Detention Center in Midland in the fall of 2022. Texas.

After his seventeenth birthday, he was taken to the Midland County Detention Center in May 2024.

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