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3 killed at McAllen party
May 01,2006
Kaitlin Bell
Monitor Staff Writer


3 killed at McAllen party

Slayings are city’s first in ’06

By Kaitlin Bell
Monitor Staff Writer

MCALLEN — McAllen police officers shot and killed a man early Sunday morning after he fired at them with a pistol.

The man had just fatally wounded his wife, 32-year-old Alma Ramirez, and 22-year-old Rene Rodriguez, McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said.

Police would not release his name Sunday, but a family member confirmed the man’s name as Arthur Ramirez.

All three McAllen residents were guests at a party held at 420 Quail Ave. in McAllen.

The homicides are McAllen’s first this year, the chief said. Last year, the city had eight total. It’s also the first time this year McAllen police have used deadly force.

The police shooting also came just a day after two Hidalgo County Sheriffs’ deputies shot and killed another man, 33-year-old Marco Antonio Torres, near 6 Mile Road and La Homa Road because he rushed at them with a knife.

The McAllen Police Department received a phone call about the violence at the Quail Avenue townhouse just before 3 a.m., police said.

Police were not releasing the name of the party’s hosts, although neighbors said they were renters there for only a few months.

When officers arrived on scene a few minutes later, they found the man had barricaded himself in the first story of the house. After a 20-minute stand-off, the man emerged through the back garage, the chief said. Six or seven deputies were waiting for him there.

“He came out the back, had a pistol in hand, took a shot or two at our officers, and they responded with fire,” the chief said.

The deputies, whose names police were also not releasing pending an internal investigation of the incident, fired multiple shots back. They transported the wounded man to McAllen Medical Center, where a justice of the peace later pronounced him dead.

Rodriguez also died later at the hospital, but Alma Ramirez was dead by the time emergency responders reached her, the chief said. Both had sustained multiple gunshot wounds.

Police could not say where in the house Ramirez’s husband shot her and Rene Rodriguez, but the house’s front window and glass panes surrounding the front door had sustained what looked like bullet holes. Photographs of a door leading from the garage into the house also showed what looked like at least 10 bullet holes, as well as blood. That was the approximate area where police said the shootout occurred.

Officers questioned between 10 and 14 adult partygoers to piece together information on-site.

Most of them seemed to have come from New York or New Jersey to work in the Valley as nurses, the chief said. Witnesses told police Alma Ramirez was working as a nurse at McAllen Medical Center, possibly among other places, and her husband was obtaining his certification.

Their 10-year-old son was one of several children at the party. He is in the custody of friends, police said.

Police would not release the names of the party’s hosts, although neighbors said they had been renting the townhouse for several months. Both the adults and children had sequestered themselves on the second floor, apparently to hide from Alma Ramirez’s husband after he began shooting, Chief Rodriguez said.

Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño, reflecting on the weekend’s two fatal shootings by law enforcement, called the pairing surprising but emphasized the episodes themselves remain uncommon.

“It really is a very rare occurrence,” he said. “I guess when it rains, it pours.”

Responding to Saturday’s shooting, Treviño placed his two deputies on paid administrative leave while the department conducts an investigation, Treviño said. It remained unclear Sunday whether the six or seven officers involved in Arthur Ramirez’s shooting would continue working.

When police have autopsy results in a few weeks and have completed their own investigation, a state district court grand jury will decide whether the officers were justified in using deadly force. In March, a grand jury decided not to file charges against three McAllen officers who fatally shot a man during an altercation where he killed his 75-year-old mother.

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Brutality rocks quiet neighborhood
May 01,2006
Kaitlin Bell
Monitor Staff Writer


Brutality rocks quiet neighborhood

By Kaitlin Bell
Monitor Staff Writer

MCALLEN — Three homicides early Sunday morning in a McAllen subdivision off Trenton Road rattled a community that residents said they had long viewed as peaceful and safe.

Police shot and killed a man just after 3 a.m. Sunday after he fired on them. The man, whose name police would not release Sunday evening but who a family member confirmed was Arthur Ramirez, had just shot and killed his wife and another man during a party at 420 Quail Ave, police said.

The newish subdivision where the shootings occurred — some townhouses remain half-built, while others appeared empty — sits one street from a more established and more heavily populated community of ranch-style homes.

Neighbors there said they had sometimes heard loud music and partying going on late into the night at the boxy, cream-colored stucco townhouse, but didn’t know the residents and had never before feared violence there. None of the three shooting victims lived at the townhouse.

Guadalupe San Martin, who lives on North 5th Street, about a block from the site of the shootings, at first seemed shocked by the news.

“I was asleep,” she said, her eyes widening as she clapped her hand to her mouth in surprise.

But she regained her composure and said she wasn’t afraid for herself or her 5-year-old son, Nikolas.

“I guess it just happens,” she said, adding this is the first such incident she has seen in six years of living in the house.

Residents at the house next door to 420 Quail Ave., who were having their own party when the shooting occurred, also described the area as calm and the house’s residents as nice people.

Luis Garza has been living at 412 Quail Ave. for about a year and recalled pleasant, casual interactions with the owners during the three months they have been renting next door. Garza said he didn’t know their names, which police were also refusing Sunday to release. All three people killed were guests at the party.

Garza said he and a few friends were playing pool in their garage when they heard gunshots.

“We heard ‘bang, bang’ and then ‘baby, no!’” he said, saying the exclamation came from a female voice. “I told everyone to get inside and sit tight.”

The cops showed up immediately, he said.

So did a friend of a friend who had attended the next-door party, Garza said. He didn’t know the man’s name but said he reported that the husband of a woman shot her and another man because he was jealous they were talking.

Police identified the woman as Alma Ramirez, 32, and the second man as Rene Rodriguez, 22, but said it was too early in their investigation to say why Ramirez’s husband might have shot them.

Garza, a martial arts instructor at the McAllen Boys & Girls Club who finished a tour in Iraq with the Marines a year ago, said it wasn’t the violence that bothered him – it was where it occurred.

“It’s really a nice neighborhood. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen around here,” he said. “It just takes one guy to ruin it.”

A couple of curious adventure seekers in the neighborhood, though, had a different take on the previous night’s events.

Jiovanni Perez, 14, and Jose Yzaguirre, 13, had just returned from a party and were up watching TV when they heard shots. Even though they were just across the street, they didn’t go investigate, they said, because they didn’t want to get in trouble with Yzaguirre’s parents.

But on Sunday afternoon, they were checking out the police van parked behind the cement wall that separates Quail Avenue from Yzaguirre’s house on the corner of Robin Avenue and 4th Street.

“It’s exciting,” Perez said.

“Nothing bad happens here – except the time somebody crashed into this,” Yzaguirre said, kicking at the cement wall.

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