SAN ANTONIO – After attorneys for fired San Antonio police detective Daniel Pue attempted to paint his mistress as malicious and out to ruin his career on Friday, attorneys for the city of San Antonio presented one piece of evidence after another showing how she tried do the opposite.
SAPD Detective Manuel Nunez, whose testimony stretched into a second day, revealed that he filed a burglary charge against Pue with the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office after investigating whether Pue had kicked in the door to his mistress’ apartment.
Prosecutors, however, declined to move forward with the case after Pue’s mistress provided a statement to the DA’s office that the damage to her door had come from inside her apartment and that no break-in had occurred.
The January 2019 incident happened hours before Pue was arrested by Bexar County Sheriff’s deputies after they found a woman with her face covered in blood outside his far West Side home.
Nunez pointed out that her statement about the apartment door damage contradicted what the woman told a different investigator the day of the incident and that she eventually refused to cooperate with any criminal complaints against Pue, who is also her cousin.
The testimony was a stark contrast to the narrative pushed by Pue’s legal counsel on Friday, who painted Pue’s mistress of five years as malicious and out to ruin Pue’s law enforcement career.
Nunez, and then hours later the SAPD sergeant who investigated Pue for internal affairs, testified that the woman’s statements given right after the assault were the most truthful, and that her story continued to change as more time passed.
During a Jan. 30, 2019, interview with SAPD Sgt. Michael Moore, the internal affairs investigator assigned to look into Pue’s possible rules violations, the mistress said she wanted various protective orders filed against Pue lifted.
“I’m worried about him, not about me,” the woman said during the taped interview.
She said she could not recall being punched by Pue and that her facial injuries were minor and came from Pue’s front door hitting her.
In a 911 call played during the hearing earlier this week, one of Pue’s neighbors describes Pue repeatedly hitting the woman with a combination of punches and back of the hand slaps in his front yard.
Pue was issued an indefinite suspension in July 2019 based on allegations that he broke rules regarding the truthfulness of members, responsibility to serve the public, use of intoxicants and waste or conversion of city equipment.
By the time he was fired, however, the family assault charge had been dismissed. The charge was tossed out by a special prosecutor in May 2019 after Pue completed an anger management class, according to court records and previous statements made by the special prosecutor.
After Moore completed his testimony just before 1 p.m., the city rested its case.
SAPD officials on Friday confirmed that Chief William McManus testified Thursday that Pue is on the DA’s “Do Not Call” list, making it difficult to assign him to investigative work should be reinstated.
