SAN ANTONIO — An officer with the San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) was suspended indefinitely and without pay after an investigation found he "failed to properly search" and remove a gun from a suspect upon his arrest in March, department records show.
About an hour later, that suspect, 19-year-old Jesus Gonzales, shot and killed himself with the weapon he managed to bring into the Bexar County jail.
Officer Abdiel I. Munoz's suspension was signed July 29 and went into effect immediately after the department said he committed neglect of duty and incompetency, violating SAPD protocol in the process.
Munoz was one of the responding officers on the morning of March 3 in the 8100 block of Tezel Road where Gonzales, who was wanted on a family violence warrant, was arrested by police. Documents say Munoz was in charge of searching him before he was taken to the jail to be booked.
Once at the jail, records say, a Bexar County corporal did a pat-down on Gonzales before a sheriff's deputy took him elsewhere to be strip-searched, per booking procedure. It was in that room that Gonzales "pulled a handgun he had concealed in his clothing and shot himself in the head," a wound that proved to be fatal.
The ensuing investigation concluded Munoz was at fault for not finding the handgun while searching him earlier.
"This is the first time that I remember that a gun made it this far in," Sheriff Javier Salazar said in March, in the aftermath of the incident, pointing to SAPD's policy of searching suspects for contraband before they're brought to the detention center. "Clearly, a weapon was missed."