No Reason for Deadly Force: Lawsuit Filed in San Antonio Police Shooting of Unarmed Latino Man

 

The girlfriend of a man who was shot and killed by an officer two weeks ago disputes a police claim that her boyfriend was standing over her and punching her before the officer opened fire. In the version told by Samantha Rivera, her boyfriend, John Cervantes, was standing about 6 feet away from her, motionless and with his hands in plain view, when the officer popped into their bedroom and shot without warning. "We heard somebody yell something and we both just froze and looked at the door," Rivera said in an interview at their East Side home. "He wasn't hitting me. He was just standing there, frozen. As soon as we saw (the officer's) head pop up, he just shot." Rivera's story, told for the first time since the March 2 shooting, directly contradicts several key points in the city's official account of what happened that night. Most notably, she said Cervantes, 26, who was by all accounts unarmed at the time, never lunged at the officer, as police have said. In the police description of the moments just before the shooting, Officer Reynaldo Montes said Cervantes was bending over Rivera and appeared to be stabbing her as she lay on the floor of their dimly lit bedroom. According to police, Montes ordered Cervantes to stop before he turned on the officer with his hand raised. Montes thought he was about to be stabbed and fired a single shot from the hip. Cervantes was the fourth person to die in law enforcement shootings that spanned six days and has spurred questions about training and tactics at the San Antonio Police Department. The conflicting accounts of how Cervantes died likely will be at the heart of a lawsuit expected to be filed against the city on his family's behalf. [more] and [more]