{"id":385835,"date":"2026-07-25T01:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T01:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/385835\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T01:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T01:37:09","slug":"he-didnt-deserve-this-father-of-txst-student-killed-by-deputy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/385835\/","title":{"rendered":"‘He didn’t deserve this’: Father of TXST student killed by deputy"},"content":{"rendered":"

AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Nearly two months after 18-year-old Texas State University freshman John Mendoza Jr. was shot and killed by a Brazoria County sheriff\u2019s deputy<\/a> in southeast Texas, his father says the family is still waiting for answers and wants criminal charges filed.<\/p>\n

John Mendoza Sr. said he wants to see accountability in the case involving the deputy the Brazoria County Sheriff\u2019s Office says shot his son.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody should be charged. Somebody should be arrested,\u201d Mendoza Sr. said. \u201cIt would at least show that there’s being movement in a positive direction with justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Mendoza family\u2019s attorney, deputy Kevin Tippit pursued Mendoza\u2019s car for about a mile to his father\u2019s home in Lake Jackson during an attempted traffic stop, where Tippit fired the gunshot that killed him.<\/p>\n

Attorney Charles Adams said Mendoza was unarmed and was with friends in the car.<\/p>\n

Days later, Brazoria County Sheriff Bo Stallman announced Tippit had been fired for policy violations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“My decision is entirely independent of the ongoing criminal investigation and should not be interpreted as a conclusion regarding criminal liability,” Stallman said at the time.<\/p>\n

The Texas Rangers and the Brazoria County District Attorney are leading the investigation. Mendoza Sr. said he believes the process is moving too slowly.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, as Americans, you we’re told to believe in justice and integrity and transparency. And we’ve gotten the exact opposite. We’ve gotten none of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Tom Hogan, an assistant law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston and a former prosecutor, said the timeline is typical in officer-involved shootings.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou generally have a of evidence. Interestingly, despite all that evidence, prosecutors across the nation often take longer to make decisions, and officer-involved shooting cases,\u201d Hogan said.<\/p>\n

Hogan said decisions about whether to file charges against officers in shootings by law enforcement can often take a year or longer.<\/p>\n

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Brazoria County Sheriff fires deputy who fatally shot Texas State freshman<\/a><\/p>\n

CBS Austin requested an update on the investigation from the Texas Rangers and the Brazoria County District Attorney. We did not receive a response as of Friday evening.<\/p>\n

“They can’t give me John back, you know, that’s all I care about,” Mendoza Sr. said. “You know, he didn’t deserve this. Nobody does. He doesn’t deserve what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mendoza Jr. was expected to return to Texas State University next month for the start of his sophomore year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we got to San Marcos, he was just like, ‘Man, dad, this is it,’\u201d said his father. \u201cThere was something about Texas State that he definitely felt at home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Nearly two months after 18-year-old Texas State University freshman John Mendoza Jr. was shot and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-385835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385835","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=385835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}