Just days from the one-year anniversary of the killing of Arlene Garcia’s son Kevin Johnson by SAPD officers, she said the Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales still hasn’t shown her Johnson’s autopsy report.
Johnson, who was Black, was shot and killed by SAPD officers on March 14, 2022, during an attempt to apprehend him over a warrant for felony possession of a firearm and a parole violation. As Johnson fled through Alazán Creek during a foot chase, officers claim they saw him reaching for a gun in his waistband and shot him multiple times.
Johnson’s family denies he was armed and said the gun police later claimed to find in the creek where Johnson was shot wasn’t his. In body camera footage from the shooting released by SAPD, it is difficult to make out the object police identified as a handgun.
Garcia said despite being told by Gonzales that the autopsy report was available as early as September, she’s never seen it.
“The D.A. actually called me back in September, I want to say 25th, 26th, to let me know they finally got Kevin’s autopsy report, his file,” Garcia said. “But since I had a lawyer, they said we’ll let your lawyer know. You know, they were going to give the information to the lawyer, that’s what I was told.”
Garcia added that she spoke with her lawyers as recently as the past week, and they said they have never been offered an autopsy report from the DA’s Office.
In response to TPR’s request for comment, a spokesperson for the DA’s Office said the DA’s practice was to disclose and review all evidence with the family of a deceased loved one “upon completion of the investigation and prior to presentation of a case to a grand jury.”
The spokesperson declined to explicitly say whether the case was still under investigation or if Gonzales was considering presenting the case to a grand jury.
Garcia said her son was smeared, and that despite his criminal record, he wasn’t a bad person.
“They did not know him,” Garcia said. “They did not know him, they went by maybe his record from the past, they didn’t know him like we did. He was a son. He was loved, he had a family.”
Garcia said she needs to know exactly what happened to Johnson — even if she finds out he suffered.
“I still want to know how many times my son got shot,” Garcia said.
