CNN
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Three San Antonio police officers were charged with murder Friday less than 24 hours after they shot a woman during a police call, the police chief announced.
Officer Eleazar Alejandro, 28; Sgt. Alfred Flores, 45; and Officer Nathaniel Villalobos, 27, are suspended from the force without pay while the investigation continues.
“The actions of the shooting officers were not consistent with SAPD policies and training, and they placed themselves in a situation where they used deadly force that was unreasonable given all the circumstances as we now understand them,” Chief William McManus said at a news conference. friday night
McManus said police were responding to a call of a woman later identified as Melissa Ann Perez, 46, cutting wires to a fire alarm system at her apartment complex.
“It appeared that Ms. Perez was having a mental health crisis,” the chief said.
After initially speaking with officers outside, Perez returned to his apartment and locked the door, according to McManus.
The edited, blurry body camera video released by the police department shows officers continuing to talk to Perez through a rear patio window, urging her to come out.
In the body cam video, he can be heard twice saying, “You don’t have a warrant!” An officer tried to open the window and McManus said Perez threw a glass chandelier at him. Police said he then swung a hammer at an officer but hit the window and broke it.
According to McManus, an officer opened fire, but Perez was not hit and can still be heard talking on the body camera video.
But seconds later, McManus said, Perez “returned to the window while still holding the hammer, and all three officers opened fire.”
More than a dozen gunshots can be heard in the body camera video. Perez was hit at least twice, according to McManus. Officers “attempted life-saving measures,” the arrest warrant said, but Perez died at the scene.
Although he was allegedly approaching the officers with a hammer when the officers opened fire, the arrest warrant said Perez “did not pose an imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death when he was shot because the defendants had a wall, a window blocked by a television and a closed door between them.
CNN has requested the unedited body camera videos in the case.
Bexar County Jail records show all three officers were released on $100,000 bond. The police department will conduct an internal review and turn it over to prosecutors once it’s complete. Court records show his preliminary hearing is set for July 25.
CNN left messages with Alejandro and Villalobos seeking comment Saturday. CNN was unable to find Flores’ contact information.
CNN reached out to the San Antonio Police Officers Association on Saturday for comment and whether the officers have lawyers, but has not heard back.
The New York Times reported that it obtained a statement from the association saying, “At this time, this is an active investigation and no further discussion of the matter can be made until the investigation is complete and the legal process is let’s go”.
The statement added that the association offered “our deepest condolences to the family of Melissa Perez.”
