A San Antonio man has been convicted of threatening to kill a park ranger at the San Antonio Missions National Historic Park.<\/p>\n
A federal jury found Sergio\u00a0Renato Tapia guilty\u00a0on a charge\u00a0of threatening to murder a federal officer.<\/p>\n
Testimony established that Tapia often spent time at the Missions and the park rangers there knew him and could recognize his voice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was arrested July 26,2023, after a threatening voicemail message was left on a visitors center phone.<\/p>\n
Jurors heard the profanity-laced voicemail message in which the caller identified himself as Tapia, referenced an employee at Mission\u00a0Concepcion and said, “I just want to say his days are numbered.”<\/p>\n
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Kirk Mangels told the jury before the call was played in court that Tapia identified himself multiple times throughout the message.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m gonna (expletive) murder him, he\u2019s (expletive) dead. I\u2019m gonna shoot him in the (expletive) head, OK?\u201d the caller said. \u201cHe\u2019s a fat, he\u2019s a bald (expletive) son of a (expletive), OK? I\u2019m gonna (expletive) kill him.”<\/p>\n
At the end of the call, the man said, “…Watch,” followed by a noise that sounded like a gun being cocked and fired without ammunition.<\/p>\n
Mangels told the jury there is no dispute the voicemail is real, and he said the person being threatened was Chief Ranger Alex\u00a0Heyer.<\/p>\n
Heyer told the jury that\u00a0Tapia has a history of interactions with law enforcement officers at the park, and said one of the rangers\u00a0checked the messages at San Jose Visitor Center’s front desk phone and recognized Tapia’s voice, as did others who worked there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tapias attorney Gene May told the panel that\u00a0Tapia has a history of mental health issues and was going through a psychotic episode when he made the call. He urged the jury to consider that he was not himself at that moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Jason Pulliam, who presided over the trial, is scheduled to sentence Tapia on July 29.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A San Antonio man has been convicted of threatening to kill a park ranger at the San Antonio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-264659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-san-antonio","9":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","10":"tag-san-antonio-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264659","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=264659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}