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AUSTIN, Texas – Two men were arrested in connection with a mechanic’s death on E. Riverside Drive last week.<\/p>\n
Timeline:<\/p>\n
On June 19, the APD homicide unit issued an arrest warrant for Israel Medina, 19, for capital murder. He had been out on bond for stealing a car.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The same day, multiple arrest warrants were issued for Medina and David Perez Jr., 26, for first-degree aggravated robbery for a different incident.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Perez was also charged with first-degree aggravated robbery for his role in the murder.<\/p>\n
Both Medina and Perez were arrested on June 19.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the Travis County Sheriff\u2019s Office, Medina is currently being held on a $400,000 bond for his capital murder charge.<\/p>\n
What they’re saying:<\/p>\n
Medina was out on bond for the theft of a car in 2025, and was enrolled in a pre-trial diversion program, which allows an offender the opportunity to have their case dismissed if they are able to meet requirements set by prosecutors and the defense.<\/p>\n
“That would be community service, cognitive education programming, theft classes, things like that just to kind of make an impact. I guess with Mr. Medina’s case, it didn’t do very well though,” says Gene Anthes, a criminal law attorney. “Pretrial diversion is usually reserved for first-time offenders or small kinds of offenses, drug offenses, people who’ve made mistakes.”<\/p>\n
But what came as a surprise to Anthes was that Medina was given the opportunity to be part of a diversion program to begin with. Court records show he had previous misdemeanors for car burglary, while his property theft charge is classified as a third-degree felony, something Anthes says he doesn\u2019t usually see qualify for the diversion program.<\/p>\n
“When I saw that he was on pre-trial diversion for a third-degree felony theft, meaning he stole more than $30,000, that made me raise some eyebrows. But what you and I aren\u2019t privy to is what’s going on in the background. There may be some problems with the state’s case in that theft case.”<\/p>\n
What happened? <\/p>\n
The backstory:<\/p>\n
The Austin Police Department says a man was shot by a suspect who tried to rob him while he was working late.<\/p>\n
On June 15, around 10:47 p.m., police responded to a call about a shooting in the AutoZone parking lot at 2237 E Riverside Drive.<\/p>\n
Officers arrived at around 11 p.m. and found 28-year-old Jose Salgado-Amador with gunshot wounds in the parking lot.<\/p>\n
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Despite life-saving measures and ATCEMS taking him to a local hospital, Salgado-Amador died from his injuries at 11:56 p.m.<\/p>\n
Police said Salgado-Amador was working as a mechanic in a parking lot off East Riverside Drive when police said the suspect demanded something from him, then shot him, ran, and drove away.<\/p>\n
Dig deeper:<\/p>\n
A witness reported that they were in the parking lot with Salgado when they were approached by the suspect. The suspect supposedly said “mechanico,” and then produced a black semi-automatic handgun before demanding property from both Salgado and the witness.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The affidavit states that Salgado complied, but when the suspect turned his attention towards the witness, Salgado attempted to wrestle the gun away.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Salgado would be shot during the interaction, with four fired cartridge cases discovered at the scene. The witness observed the suspect flee on foot toward a light-colored four-door sedan.<\/p>\n
That claim was backed up by surveillance video along E. Riverside Drive, which captures the vehicle entering the parking lot around 10:33 p.m. At around 10:45 p.m, that same vehicle was seen traveling back through the parking lot, followed by a subject running on foot.<\/p>\n
Detectives also obtained additional surveillance stills from the H-E-B at 2508 East Riverside Drive on June 15. They observed the suspect’s car parked, and two subjects entered the store, confirming one of them to be David Perez Jr.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The other suspect appeared to be a smaller, Hispanic male wearing blue and white shoes, a red short-sleeved shirt, blue jeans, and a large diamond chain with a pendant. This clothing description matched the report given by the witness who saw the struggle happen between Salgado and the suspect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Footage from a Wells Fargo ATM also captured a suspect fleeing the scene, wearing that description of clothing. Detectives would eventually identify this suspect as Israel Medina.<\/p>\n
On June 19, the suspect\u2019s car would eventually be in East Austin, where officers began surveillance and observed Medina and Perez enter the car and exit an apartment complex together.<\/p>\n
The Source: Information from the Austin Police Department and previous FOX 7 Austin coverage<\/p>\n
Crime and Public Safety<\/a>Riverside<\/a>South Austin<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas – Two men were arrested in connection with a mechanic’s death on E. Riverside Drive last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,1046,223,17139,4522,394,216,393],"class_list":["post-346576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-crime-publicsafety","tag-news","tag-riverside","tag-south-austin","tag-travis-county","tag-tx","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346576","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=346576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}