John Jefferson
Inset: Joel Castillo (Selfie/KENS). Background: The apartment complex where he was fatally shot (Google Maps).
One Texas teenager is dead and another is behind bars after a disparaging comment about someone’s dead mother led to gun violence earlier this week, police in the Lone Star State say.
On Wednesday night, two separate 911 calls were made — exactly one minute apart — about shots fired on the west side of San Antonio, according to the San Antonio Police Department.
Now, Joel Castillo, 16, is dead, according to the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office. The victim’s alleged killer is said to be his 14-year-old neighbor. The defendant’s identity has yet to be made public.
The suspect has since been charged with murder, a police department spokesperson told Law&Crime.
“No families out here deserve this, father or mother, to have to see their kid leave this earth, leave this world,” Castillo’s grieving father told San Antonio-based CBS affiliate KENS.
“All the families out there that lost their children, I feel y’alls’ pain,” he continued. “I never thought I would lose mine.”
The incident occurred around 10:40 p.m. on Wednesday, at a sprawling apartment complex near San Carlos Street and Agatha Street, according to police.
The 14-year-old and Castillo had a long-running feud, police told San Antonio-based NBC affiliate WOAI. On the night in question, the alleged killer began the fight by taunting the slain boy about his recently deceased mother, police say. At that point, the simmering arguments and insults turned physical.
A fight broke out between the two boys, police told KENS.
Then, at some point, the 14-year-old allegedly pulled out a gun and shot the 16-year-old “several times throughout the body,” before fleeing the scene of the crime, according to police. Castillo is said to have died from a wound to his abdomen, authorities said.
The father of the victim told KENS he attempted to protect his son as the altercation escalated.
“He has a gun,” he told the TV station. “He tells me to get back.”
The direct intervention having failed, Castillo’s father said he then went to speak to the alleged shooter’s mother. While on the way to the nearby apartment unit, he heard the shots ring out.
Then, he ran to comfort his son.
“I was holding him,” the distraught father said. “I heard him. His last words: ‘Dad,’ He said: ‘Dad.’ All I kept telling him was: ‘Don’t leave me.””
The victim was rushed to a nearby hospital where his condition was listed as critical. He succumbed to his injuries less than two hours later, police told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Meanwhile, the alleged killer was briefly in the wind, police told San Antonio-based radio station KTSA. The 14-year-old’s own mother, however, gave police a description of her son and he was apprehended on Thursday morning, law enforcement said.
Castillo’s family now faces two abrupt and monumental losses in the same year. The mother of the children, Sandra Martinez, 35, died in a head-on collision car crash in February.
“I feel like I ain’t got no heart,” Castillo’s brother, speaking through tears, told KENS. “I feel like I ain’t got nothing left inside me. I don’t know how I live with this. I really wanted my baby brother to be with me. For the rest of these years we had to grow up together.”
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