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The relatives of a woman slain by San Antonio police officers dispute a federal judge's recommendations to dismiss their civil suit against the City of San Antonio and two former police officers over the 2023 death.
In June of that year, three officers fired into the apartment of Melissa Perez, striking and killing the woman who was having a mental health episode.
The fire department had called them — according to the arrest affidavits — because the woman attempted to dismantle external fire alarms she thought the FBI had used to monitor her. Perez suffered from schizophrenia and had exhibited odd and irrational behavior.
Body camera footage showed she ran from an officer when he arrived and barricaded herself inside her home.
Officers tried multiple times to enter the home but she repelled them. She threw a candlestick, striking one officer.
“You're gonna get shot,” he yelled.
“Shoot me!” she yelled back.
Minutes later, she was fired upon by the three officers. Only bullets from two of the officers struck her, ballistics revealed, according to a source with knowledge.
SAPD commanders said the men violated protocol, and they were arrested hours later.
Two of the former officers — Eleazar Alejandro and Alfred Flores — were charged with murder for the shooting and killing of Perez. A third former officer, Nathaniel Villalobos, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon by a public servant.
The shooting prompted calls for reform within the department, questions from mental health advocates and a civil rights lawsuit from Perez’s family.
But Federal Magistrate Judge Henry Bemporad recommended the presiding judge in the case dismiss the civil suit late last month. He said there was reason to believe the police felt threatened by a woman who was acting aberrantly, who had thrown a candlestick at them and who ran toward the men with a hammer.
Bemporad also ruled that the former officers are shielded by qualified immunity, which generally protects government officials from liability.
Attorneys for the family argued in their filing on Monday afternoon that Perez was shot through a locked glass door and posed no threat to the officers.
They also cited Police Chief William McManus, who said the officers acted inappropriately.
"When the district attorney saw the body camera footage, he charged the Officer Defendants with murder, and when the grand jury saw the body camera footage, they issued an actual indictment against the Officer Defendants for murder. Yet, when the Court saw the same body camera footage, it concluded that, as a matter of law, the shooting was not excessive," said the filing. "It is extremely difficult for a grieving family and a grieving community to reconcile why the Court’s review of the body camera footage is the polar opposite of what every other authority has seen when he or she has reviewed the body camera footage."
Judge Fred Biery will decide in coming weeks whether to dismiss the civil lawsuit.
Paul Flahive and Dan Katz contributed to this report.
