The San Antonio Police Department released body-worn camera video on Wednesday, September 2, 2026. The shooting happened Saturday, August 1, just after 7:30 at night, in the 600 block of Aurora Avenue on the West Side.
Time of day matters on these, so start there. Half past seven in the evening in August. Not the middle of the night.
The call came from a neighbor. The man next door was in his front yard waving a gun. She told the dispatcher there was history with him and that she did not know what was going on with him mentally. That is what officers were rolling on.
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They arrived and approached. He backed away from them. An officer asked what he had. He answered that he had a knife. Another officer called out that he had a gun. Officers drew and told him to put it away, and he told them it was in his back pocket. He asked, more than once, whether they had a warrant. He argued about trespassing. He refused repeated orders to get on the ground.
Then one officer took over, and this is the part of the video worth your time.
You can hear the change. The first officer on him is doing what a newer officer does under stress — narrating, announcing, asking the man for help. The one who takes over does something else entirely. He asks him to face away. He asks if he remembers him. He offers to call his daughter. He tells him nobody is going to hurt him, that it is all good, that it does not have to be like this. He hears units coming in code and tells them to kill the sirens before they arrive, because that will only make it worse.
Then he holsters his own weapon and shows him his hands. Other officers stayed on lethal cover the whole time.
Then the man reached down toward his back pocket with both hands. The officer went straight back to his gun. Officers fired.
Raul Garza, 69, died at the scene. He was armed with a handgun and it was recovered. No officer was injured and nobody else was hurt.
There is nothing negative to say about this one. The officers did a great job.
Count the chances this man got. The call was a gun. He said a knife. He refused orders to get on the ground over and over. He argued about warrants. He put officers in a position where a mistake by anybody kills somebody, and they kept working the problem anyway.
The gun-in-the-holster move is not something a lot of guys will recommend, and it is not for every suspect. But with this man, on this night, if it had worked it would have been the right call — and it very nearly did. Killing the sirens is the same instinct. That is a veteran who has read the situation and is trying to lower the temperature instead of raising it.
The idea that cops are all out there hunting shootings is a misconception, and this video is the answer to it. Nobody wants this one. If you are an officer looking for action, you want it with someone who chose the life. Not with a 69-year-old man who is off his medication and having a rough time of it.
It ended the way it had to once he reached. By that point the gun was confirmed — not something we know in hindsight, something every officer on that scene had seen with their own eyes. You cannot stand there and let a man draw a gun and fire on you. He reached down with both hands. That was the moment, and it was his to choose.
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