On their placards and in discussions with the Militant, protesters noted that Escobar was the second Latino teenager to die at the hands of the Houston Police Department in the space of three weeks. The other was Jose Vargas, 15, shot dead on October 31.
Escobar died instantly at 5:30 p.m. after being blasted in the head by Houston cop Arthur Carbonneau. Together with his fellow cop, Ronald Olivo, Carbonneau had chased the youth and pinned his legs to the ground.
Houston Police Officers’ Union lawyer Aaron Suder rallied to Carbonneau’s defense, saying that the gun fired accidentally after Escobar kicked the cop’s hand. “If you can’t get a suspect’s hands under control and you think they might be trying to gain access to a weapon, you have every justification in drawing your weapon,” he said. Carbonneau has been relieved of duty at full pay
“It was so unnecessary,” eyewitness Jesse Rodriguez told the November 25 Houston Chronicle. Rodriguez had accompanied the cops to the scene after reporting that another youth had punched his son. “They ignored me when I was telling them who had assaulted my son,” he said. “They were too busy roughing up Eli, who didn’t have anything to do with the assault.”
Rodriguez said that as the cops seized Escobar, “he was saying, ‘Help me! Help me! I didn’t do anything. What did I do?’ They had no mercy on him, no compassion.”
Another witness, 14-year-old Jose Salmeron, told the Chronicle, “There was no need to pull out a gun. It was two full-grown men against a kid.”
“They’re killing our children,” added Diane Bossom of Copwatch, an anti-police brutality organization. “Everybody in Houston should be demanding justice for this.”
The November 24 action was led by family members and most of the protesters were residents of this working-class Latino area, which includes several large apartment complexes. Many youth took part, some of whom knew Escobar. A shrine with candles and pictures marked the spot where he died. Among the participating organizations were the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, La Resistencia, and Copwatch.
“How can a 14-year-old kid be a threat to the cops?” Jennifer Yañez, 17, told the Militant. “They are supposed to protect you. Now I have zero respect for the cops.”
Yañez said she had just pulled out of the apartment complex parking lot early the evening of Escobar’s death when the cop car came screeching in. Later that night she heard about the killing, she said. Ann Marie Tesche said that her daughter Cynthia, also at the protest, was a classmate of Escobar at Black Middle School. “They need to put these cops on trial like any other criminals, and convict them,” she said. Participants carried hand-lettered signs reading, “Stop Killing Our Kids”; “Jail the Killer Cops”; “Justice Now!” and “Cruising = HPD [Houston Police Department] Death Penalty.” The latter was a specific reference to the killing of Jose Vargas on October 31.
The youth had been driving his car lawfully through the parking lot of the local AMC cinema complex when he was ordered to stop by Richard Butler, an off-duty cop. Butler pulled out his revolver and stuck it through the SUV’s open window. He claims that the weapon discharged when the vehicle lurched forward. Vargas was pronounced dead at Ben Taub Hospital.
On November 19 Vargas’s family members and supporters rallied at the theater parking lot to call for the investigation and prosecution of Butler, who remains on duty.
In a November 25 editorial titled, “Cause for Alarm: Deaths of teens in clashes with police outrageous,” the Chronicle sent a warning to city authorities that the police had gone too far in the highly publicized shootings. Fearing the consequences of the brazen killings, the editors stated that, “Only strong leadership can prevent a breakdown of trust between citizens and police”
That evening, a public memorial mass for Escobar drew 100 people. A noon rally against police brutality was held in downtown Houston the next day.
Brian Williams contributed to this article.
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