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Title: Sheriff Mistakes Innocent Man for Suspect, Dumps 10 Rounds Into Him—NO CHARGES
Source:
FromThe Trenches
URL Source: https://fromthetrenchesworldreport. ... nds-into-him-no-charges/253504
Published: Sep 3, 2019
Author: Jack Burns
Post Date: 2019-09-03 05:30:38 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 415
Comments: 1
Kimble County, TX — Kimble County Sheriff Hilario Cantu is taking fire in the form of criticism after he opened fire on an innocent man, dumping 10 rounds into him and his truck. Quite unlike what the general public would face, in the form of criminal charges, Cantu will likely face no charges, serve no time in jail, and will potentially not even be disciplined for shooting up the wrong moving vehicle. What started out as a traffic stop for a missing license plate nearly turned deadly for both one police officer and one hapless innocent bystander. When officer Lee Meadow pulled over a Gray Chevy Colorado pickup he had no idea the motorist would allegedly pull out a gun and shoot at him as he was standing beside the driver’s side window. After the certain brush with death, the suspect fled. Meadow then radioed in that a suspect in a Gray Chevy Colorado had shot at him and then fled. Hearing the call come over the radio, Cantu and another deputy grabbed some long guns, and ran out of the police precinct to intercept the wanna-be cop killer. Cantu and his deputy took a position along an exit of the highway and noticed a truck coming in their direction and believed it to be the suspect vehicle. Cantu took aim and fired 10 rounds of .223 ammunition from his AR-15 into the truck. But there was one major problem. The truck Cantu shot was a White Silverado not a Gray Colorado. It also had only two doors—not four. Despite there being a difference in size between the two vehicles, and the fact the truck was a completely different color, Cantu fired at the truck nonetheless. The sheriff’s bullets found their mark with at least one of the bullets piercing the side of Hugo Reyes, an oil field worker from West Texas. Reyes was on the phone with his wife, Amparo Villareal, at the time he was shot. She told reporters: He told me he saw the police on the side of the road…He thought it was weird that they had big guns…Suddenly we heard this ruckus. I thought he’d gotten distracted and he’d hit somebody. Then the phone cut off. Reyes has yet to make a formal statement but his lawyer described what happened next to the innocent victim in the shooting. Bobby Garcia, the family’s lawyer, said Reyes was treated like a cop shooter when he arrived at the hospital and said the man suffered dearly. According to the Houston Chronicle: He said Reyes was hit by several bullets and suffered two collapsed lungs and an injured liver. Villarreal said her husband spent several days in the hospital. She said he only recently was able to return to work. The family is now over $250,000 in debt to medical bills and they have yet to receive so much as an apology from Cantu or the county. Garcia says it has been an apparent nightmare for the family. They have yet to file a lawsuit against the sheriff and the county. According to the Houston Chronicle, a grand jury refused to indict Cantu and he was not disciplined for his actions. Cantu said he thought of his wife’s car which was a white-like silver when he heard the call of a gray truck come over the radio. In fact, the sheriff said he would do it all over again if presented with the same circumstances which he faced on that fateful day. As for the real shooting suspect, the Chronicle writes: Sharrod Moore, who was fleeing a murder he’d committed in El Paso, pulled off the highway at the exit past Sheriff Cantu and killed himself. If a member of the public had taken it upon themselves to shoot at a fleeing suspect vehicle and mistakenly hit the wrong truck and the wrong suspect, it is almost certain he or she would not see the light of day for quite some time. However, because the perpetrator wears a badge, he will face no consequences. Shameful indeed, but not an isolated incident. As TFTP reported in 2016, exposing the double standard between police and civilians, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced that no criminal charges will be filed against the eight LAPD officers responsible for nearly killing an innocent woman and her daughter. Although the cops ambushed the unarmed women without warning and fired over 100 bullets without provocation, the district attorney justified the case of mistaken identity due to the fact that the officers involved were afraid and incompetent.
Poster Comment: From the Houston Chronicle article: Roberts said Sheriff Cantu was not disciplined for the incident. Cantu said if he had to do it over again, his behavior wouldn’t change. "If the same exact circumstances came up on the day after, I would do the same thing," he said. Typical cop. Zero remorse, no responsibility for their actions, and no learning from an obvious mistake.
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#1. To: Deckard, GrandIsland, sneakypete (#0)
Here's a blog post from a frequent court witness who decided to take photos of all 254 Texas courthouses. Here's a nice photo of Hilario with the Maybe shooting the innocent white pickup driver scared the Bad Guy so much that he self-executed on the next exit ramp down the interstate. The grand jury didn't give a crap about the (likely outsider) oil field worker who got shot up. He worked the West Texas oil fields, to the west of Kimble County (that can't even afford to fix their courthouse clock). So they let their local sheriff off the hook for the shooting. They may even believe that any civil lawsuit against the county will be a lower award since they held the sheriff harmless in the shooting. I hope the good folk of Kimble County, Texas get their asses sued off by the victim of their sheriff, ripped and reamed memorably by the shooting victim. There's no excuse for this and they should seek full punitive damages to make it clear to the citizenry that it is very expensive for them personally to keep a careless and easily excited sheriff on their payroll and just let him continue being sheriff with no consequences despite his demonstrable criminal carelessness in shooting up most any vehicle driving by on a local interstate.
Blogspot: Texas Courthouse Trails 
As I was leaving the courthouse I ran into Sheriff Hilario Cantu, who asked about my camera. I showed him my retired Houston Police id badge and we instantly became friends. He said that he had been elected in 2012 after filling out the remaining term for the prior sheriff. Sheriff Cantu is from the Eagle Pass border area of Texas and began his law enforcement career by catching narcotics smugglers. He moved up to Junction and loves the county and the country. He laments the fact that the county does not have the money to improve the courthouse and sheriff's office. But he is not discouraged. He has an interdiction force along I-10 and it's only a matter of time that they catch a money haul south. He's my kind of sheriff and I'm glad we have lawmen in Texas like him. gray white pickup he shot the hell out of while the Bad Guy was evading him, only to commit suicide an exit ramp down the highway. The sheriff not only has problems with telling a white 2-door pickup from a gray 4-door pickup (target discrimination), he has some real accuracy problems as well if we try to score his shooting by the bullet holes he left on the white pickup. 
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