Jose Walter Garza, the 30-year-old homeless man who was killed by police outside a Laredo truck stop, was “armed” with a pellet gun, reports the New York Daily News. Five minutes after the police arrived, six officers opened fire, perforating Garza’s body. Investigator Joe Baeza refused to specify how many shots were fired. The victim’s family said that the killers fired at least eighty rounds.
Garza, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, was shot so many times “he had no face,” reported his cousin, Andrea Martinez.
The emotionally troubled man, who was receiving treatment (which, some would insist, is not particularly helpful, at best), had been arrested on dozens of previous occasions on a variety of charges.
“It’s unclear if any of the officers involved in the shooting had come in contact with Garza in the past,” observed the Daily News. If the officers had considered him to be a nuisance, this would explain both the overkill-level fusillade, and the celebratory fist-bump that punctuated the killing.
According to Baeza, the officers who carried out the execution have been “temporarily reassigned.”
2:55 pm on September 3, 2014
