Idaho teen Alissa Huerta said she was fleeing an attack, while investigators allege video and recovered phone evidence point to an intentional collision.
NAMPA, Idaho — A planned early-morning fight, a baseball bat and sharply different accounts of what happened as a Honda left a Nampa parking lot are at the center of a first-degree murder case against 18-year-old Alissa Mae Huerta in the death of Jade Aliyah Ramirez.
Ramirez, 19, died after being struck by a vehicle July 26 in the 1500 block of Caldwell Boulevard. Huerta acknowledges being behind the wheel but initially denied intentionally aiming at Ramirez, according to allegations in a probable cause affidavit. Detectives say video and evidence recovered from Huerta’s cellphone tell a different story. Those competing accounts have not yet been tested at trial, and Huerta remains accused, not convicted, of first-degree murder.
The encounter did not arise from a chance meeting, investigators allege. According to court-document accounts, Huerta and Ramirez had been involved in a dispute dating to February. Police said Ramirez confronted Huerta about an intimate relationship between Huerta and the father of Ramirez’s child. Investigators described numerous threatening text and voice communications between the women over the following months. The conflict eventually moved from phones to an in-person meeting arranged in a Nampa parking lot during the early hours of July 26.
Huerta told police the fight itself was supposed to involve her sister and Ramirez. Her sister separately told investigators that she intended to fight Ramirez, according to reporting on the affidavit. That distinction could become important as the case proceeds because the prosecution’s allegations involve both advance arrangements and Huerta’s later conduct with the vehicle. The documents available publicly do not establish that Huerta and Ramirez had agreed to every aspect of the confrontation, and they do not resolve every action taken by the people who were present.
Huerta’s description of the immediate moments before the collision included an alleged attack on her car. She told detectives Ramirez arrived with a baseball bat and hit the Honda multiple times, breaking the driver’s-side window and damaging the windshield. Huerta said she then tried to leave. She specifically denied intentionally aiming her car at Ramirez, according to the affidavit. That account presents the vehicle’s movement as an attempt to escape a volatile confrontation rather than an intentional effort to strike another person.
Detectives, however, said witness video contradicted that explanation. The affidavit describes footage in which the Honda’s front bumper makes contact with Ramirez’s legs, sending her onto the hood. Investigators alleged that one of her legs appeared to become caught near the driver’s-side wheel area before the Honda accelerated while turning around an adjacent light pole. Police said the vehicle then passed over Ramirez. She was left in the parking lot with life-threatening injuries and was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
How that video is interpreted is likely to be critical because the distinction between an accidental collision while leaving and an intentional strike goes to the core of the prosecution. Police said they reviewed the available evidence and determined that striking Ramirez was intentional. The defense has not yet had a trial at which it can cross-examine witnesses, challenge investigators’ conclusions or present a competing interpretation of the footage. The probable cause account therefore remains an allegation supporting a charge rather than a final finding of fact.
Huerta’s own phone added another dimension. Investigators say they recovered Snapchat material that had been deleted. In one audio recording quoted in reports on the affidavit, Huerta allegedly said, “I ran her over, though. I’m not going to lie.” Police described another clip in which she again discussed running Ramirez over while referring to a remark attributed to her sister. The state may argue that the recordings show what Huerta understood had happened shortly after the confrontation, though the ultimate meaning and evidentiary weight of those statements will be questions for the court.
The case also contains a sequence of statements that investigators viewed as inconsistent. Huerta initially denied intentionally directing the Honda toward Ramirez. Police later alleged that she acknowledged running Ramirez over. An acknowledgment that a vehicle struck someone is not automatically the same as an admission that the driver intended to kill that person, and the publicly reported portions of the case do not eliminate that legal distinction. Prosecutors must still prove the required elements of the charge through admissible evidence rather than through the accusation alone.
Officers were first dispatched at about 4:20 a.m. after a report of a pedestrian struck in the parking lot. The vehicle had left before they arrived. Ramirez was taken to a hospital, where she died. Police initially said they did not have enough evidence to charge anyone. The case changed as detectives interviewed those involved and reviewed the circumstances preceding the impact. On July 28, police arrested Huerta and announced a first-degree murder charge, saying their investigation had led them to classify the strike as intentional.
Attention has now moved to the amount of evidence gathered since the arrest. At an Aug. 26 proceeding, Huerta’s defense said it had recently received substantial discovery requiring additional review. The preliminary hearing was moved to Sept. 23. At that hearing, the judge is expected to determine whether prosecutors have presented sufficient evidence for the murder case to continue. Huerta remains jailed without bond, and the court has ruled that recording and Zoom access will not be available for that proceeding.
The legal dispute thus reaches beyond whether Huerta’s Honda struck Ramirez, a point investigators say is supported by video and Huerta’s own statements. The unresolved issue is why and under what circumstances the vehicle moved as it did. The state alleges an intentional killing after months of hostility and a planned confrontation. Huerta told police she was trying to leave after Ramirez damaged her vehicle with a bat. The Sept. 23 hearing is the next scheduled step in determining whether prosecutors have enough evidence to continue pursuing first-degree murder.
Author note: Last updated September 8, 2026.