New San Antonio mural remembers local residents slain by police

A first-of-its-kind mural unveiled Friday evening on a West Side shipping container memorializes those allegedly slain by law-enforcement officials in San Antonio.

Among those who have lost their lives in recent years: Marquise Jones, Charles “Chop” Roundtree, Kevin Johnson, Melissa Perez, Andre “AJ” Hernandez, Alejandro Vitela, Norman Cooper, Marcus McVae, Jesse Aguirre and Antronie Scott.

“It isn’t quite finished,” Ananda Tomas, executive director of police reform group ACT 4 SA, told reporters the unveiling. “We do have the names of other victims of SAPD. We know this is not all of them. There’s only so much space on a shipping container, but it does show that there’s a problem here.”

The mural, spray-painted on a container at 2115 North Zarzamora St., features phrases such as “addiction,” “overdose” and “excited delirium,” which police-reform advocates say authorities often use in an attempt to explain away deaths at the hands of officers.

Indeed, SAPD used the term “excited delirium" as the cause of death for the late Baltasar Rodriguez Jr.

SAPD officers apprehended Rodriguez on Sept. 1, 2021, after someone called to report a man stumbling around an East Side street. Although it was apparent that Rodriguez was experiencing a medical episode, police put him on his stomach and handcuffed him, his family members said.
SAPD has still not allowed Rodriguez’s mother, Mary, to view body-cam footage, according to the family. And despite police writing that her son died of "excited delirium" — a cause of death that courts no longer recognize, Tomas said — Rodriguez’s autopsy states that he had four broken ribs, bruises on his face and leg abrasions.

“They killed him,” longtime Rodriguez friend John Allison Vaughn said before the unveiling of the mural. “They killed him because no matter what, they handled the situation wrong. He was alive when he was arrested and dead when he left — that’s the bottom line.”

Family members of Andre “AJ” Hernandez, Marquis Jones and Sgt. Damien Daniels also were attendance during the unveiling. Hernandez and Jones were both shot by SAPD officers, and Daniels — a veteran reportedly suffering a mental health episode — was shot by a Bexar County sheriff's deputy.

Rudy Rodriguez, a childhood friend who grew up with Baltasar Rodriguez Jr., completed the painting. The mural is his first work of public art.

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