SAN ANTONIO \u2013 The palm trees in front of PicaPica Plaza, a popular shopping center on the South Side, were set on fire early Tuesday morning, according to the business manager. <\/p>\n
Manager Rudy Lopez told KSAT 12 he first heard about the fire from community members.<\/p>\n
\u201cI immediately rushed over here,\u201d Lopez said. <\/p>\n
Lopez said a man driving by at the time called 911 to report the fire. <\/p>\n
Surveillance video from PicaPica captured a person walking towards the trees along the side of the building around 5 a.m. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe took maybe 10-15 seconds in the back and as he\u2019s walking out, you can see like a flashback boom, where I guess he had an accelerant, he had gas, he had something that started it up,\u201d Lopez said. <\/p>\n
Lopez said the suspect walked off as the fire started and disappeared off the camera. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t find him after that,\u201d Lopez said. \u201cWe’ve been talking to neighboring businesses, checking their cameras, SAPD … but we do have an arson investigator that is on it now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The San Antonio Fire Department confirmed the investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made as of Wednesday afternoon. <\/p>\n
\u201cNever in the nine years that I\u2019ve been here, never has this happened or gone to this extent,\u201d Lopez said. <\/p>\n
Lopez urged the community to stay vigilant and to come forward if they have information.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoever it was, whoever was here, I mean, we forgive you,\u201d Lopez said. \u201cJust stay away from Pica and just don\u2019t do it to us and don\u2019t it to other communities.\u201d <\/p>\n
Read also: <\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 The palm trees in front of PicaPica Plaza, a popular shopping center on the South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[630,13360,633,82,84,83,4937],"class_list":["post-17003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-fire","tag-picapica-plaza","tag-safd","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-south-side"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}