SAN ANTONIO – Among the first witnesses called by Robert Rendon’s defense team was his mother, after prosecutors rested their case on Tuesday.
She told the jury her reaction when she learned that her son had been arrested following a gunfire-punctuated high-speed chase.
“I was in shock when the Texas Ranger came to my house,” Delores McCartney testified.
Her son had been leading police on a chase that began in Fredericksburg on the night of April 19, 2014, after he shot and wounded Officer Bradley Durst during a traffic stop.
San Antonio police picked up the chase from Comal County officers on Highway 281. Rendon and SAPD officers exchanged gunfire with him during the chase.
It finally ended on Highway 90 East and Ackerman Road when Rendon lost control of his car and it flipped over.
His mother testified that the family had just purchased the car the day before.
“We started discussing about vehicles that I had found and we finally decided that we would go down to the car lot and look,” McCartney said.
He was driving the car the family had just purchased when he shot Durst.
In January, Rendon will go on trial in Gillespie County on attempted capital murder charges for that shooting.
In that case, as in the San Antonio case currently on trial, Rendon is facing a maximum sentence of life in prison if he is convicted.
Testimony will resume Thursday in San Antonio in Judge Kevin O’Connell’s 227th District Court.