SAN ANTONIO \u2014 SAN ANTONIO – The trial of three former San Antonio police officers accused in the deadly shooting of Melissa Perez took a contentious turn as the defense sought to shift blame onto Officer Jesus Rojas, the first officer on the scene. <\/p>\n
The trial, now in its fourth day, has been marked by legal disputes over whether the officers needed a warrant to enter Perez’s home.<\/p>\n
Sgt. Alfred Flores and Officer Eleazor Alejandro face murder charges, while Officer Nathaniel Villalobos is charged with aggravated assault in the shooting of the 46-year-old woman. Before the trial began, a heated legal argument erupted over the necessity of a warrant for the officers’ entry.<\/p>\n
Defense attorney Nico LaHood argued, “The fact that they’re underlining the theme that they’re trying to thread through this trial is it’s an illegal entry and they needed a warrant. Therefore, she can use a hammer to defend her property. That’s insane.”<\/p>\n
David Lunan, chief of the Felony Criminal Trial Division and prosecutor in the case, countered, “The evidence is and will continue to remain that they had no consent and that they had no warrant.”<\/p>\n
Judge Ron Rangel ruled, “I’m gonna grant the defense objections to preclude the state from calling this an unlawful arrest.”<\/p>\n
The defense then cross-examined Officer Rojas, questioning his decision not to arrest Perez. Attorney Ben Sifuentes asked, “So when you failed to arrest Melissa Perez, that was poor tactics, correct?” He argued that had Rojas made the arrest, the incident might have been avoided.<\/p>\n
Officer Rojas explained, “I don’t have to put her in handcuffs right away. If she’s cooperative, it’s up to me to decide when I do that.”<\/p>\n
As the trial continues, jurors must consider the officers’ actions and the legal implications of their decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2014 SAN ANTONIO – The trial of three former San Antonio police officers accused in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4017,5947,2126,6057,82,84,83,95,2128,6056],"class_list":["post-5831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-defense","tag-legal","tag-melissa-perez","tag-officers","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-shooting","tag-trial","tag-warrant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5831","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=5831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}