2023-06-27 19:05:37
USA
She was shot following she tried to cut the fire alarm wires in her compound.
27/6/2023
Recent official and NGO reports have raised questions regarding the inconvenient ways police officers in the United States use to address situations involving mental health issues.
A case that might prove them right would be the one that has just been presented in San Antonio, Texas, where three agents are behind bars today, accused of killing Melissa Pérez, a woman of Hispanic origin, the protagonist of an emergency call that they had. to attend to in the early hours of last Friday.
According to >, in a statement released through the family’s lawyer, Alexis Tovar, Pérez’s daughter, said: “We have always been a pro-police family. This is heartbreaking. I always trusted the police to protect me and now I don’t. I don’t know who to trust. We cannot express how hurt we are.”
There they had to take charge of dealing with Pérez, who was cutting the cables of the group fire alarm.
As the firefighters failed to dissuade her, neighbors decided to call law enforcement officers.
According to William McManus, the local police director, she was having a nervous breakdown.
In fact, when the police arrived, he was still talking with some members of that force in the parking lot of the housing complex.
The police officers asked Melissa Pérez to approach their patrol car, but she did not obey, instead running to her apartment, where she locked herself in.
One of the policemen removed the screen from the porch door and thus managed to enter the apartment.
Seeing him, Pérez took a candle and threw it at him.
Given this, they believed it was necessary to ask for reinforcements, and while they arrived, three agents guarded the front of the house, while the defendants guarded the backyard, but from outside.
At the time, they were trying to convince Perez to leave the property, but she refused. Then, one of the officers jumped over the patio railing and Perez’s reaction was to grab a hammer and he started walking towards them.
Suddenly, when swinging the tool, he broke the glass of a window, to which one of the police officers responded with a shot that apparently did not cause the woman any harm.
Immediately, she went back to the window with the hammer and the agents opened fire once morest her.
Melisa Pérez received at least two shots and, following forcing the door of the apartment, the agents proceeded to apply first aid while she brought an ambulance.
But it was all in vain and she was pronounced dead at the scene.
“The actions of the firing officers were not consistent with the policy and training of the San Antonio Police Department. They chose to use deadly force, which was unreasonable given the circumstances as we now understand them,” Chief McManus said.
The family reported that they will sue the city of San Antonio and the police department for violations of Melissa Perez’s civil rights.
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