"There was no ramming or crash, it was a bump"
San Antonio, TX — In June of 2022, a battle of narratives emerged in San Antonio, TX, following an officer-involved shooting that left deceased 13-year-old Andre Hernandez Jr. San Antonio police claim Hernandez attempted to injure or kill other officers with the vehicle he was driving, but the family’s attorney stated no such encounter ever took place. Video from the incident was just released this week, and it shows that the officers were, in fact, not in much danger and should not have killed Hernandez.
At the time, attorney Lee Merritt, who represents the family, said there was never any threat to officer safety after he watched the video. This week, the video was publicly released after a grand jury declined to charge officer Stephen Ramos, who killed Hernandez.
Admittedly, Hernandez should not have been driving the vehicle, but Ramos apparently wasted little time taking a shot at Hernandez, whom the officer reportedly claims was using his vehicle as a weapon and violently slammed his vehicle into the police vehicle, spurring him to shoot in defense of fellow officers.
Though the boy did collide with the officer's vehicle, after the original collision, there was no threat. Hernandez had made a poor decision, and he was executed for it.
As the video shows, when Hernandez was being pulled over, he backed his vehicle into the driveway of a home and slowly, non-aggressively, allowed his vehicle to bump into the patrol car. Merritt remarked;
The car was not traveling more than 2 to 5 miles per hour...There was no ramming or crash, it was a bump...In less than a second, you hear a gunshot.
Merritt’s perspective stands in stark contrast to reported statements San Antonio PD made publicly about the incident. They read in part;
While attempting to stop the suspect vehicle, the vehicle accelerated towards a marked SAPD patrol vehicle, crashing into the officer’s patrol vehicle...A second officer, fearing that the other officer would be stuck by the suspect vehicle, discharged his firearm and struck the suspect driver.
“Don’t let him ram you!” Ramos yells at officer Espinoza, who stops his Chevrolet Tahoe patrol vehicle, opens the door and puts his left leg out on the side. Highlighting the lack of danger faced by the officer who was actually a part of the collision, is that Espinoza never felt the need to fire, much less draw a weapon. What's more, if we look at a photo of the "ramming," it is clear that the car was barely rolling when it impacted the officer's Tahoe.
As the video shows, Hernandez exited the vehicle after being shot, and was very respectful to the officers, even using responding cordially to officers using “Sir” and politely telling the officers he had “been shot.” At the time, Hernandez’ mother did not immediately know what had happened to her child when San Antonio police made contact with him.
In fact, it took five days before the police department admitted it had killed her son amid calls to police that someone in the area had been discharging a firearm. No weapon was reported to have been found in the boy’s vehicle.
Nevertheless, the system will not be holding the officer to account for executing a child over a fender bender.
“It was reasonable for Officer Ramos to believe that Officer Espinoza was standing outside of his vehicle and was therefore being threatened with deadly force by the red Toyota as it accelerated towards him,” a memo detailing the DA’s review states, according to the Express-News.
Watch the video below and decide for yourself if it was "reasonable" for Ramos to kill Hernandez over this incident.
