UPDATE: Caesar Tijerina, one of the suspects wanted in the death of SAISD student Simon Cuevas, shot himself early Friday morning at a home in Laredo, authorities said.
Tijerina, 20, was airlifted to a hospital in San Antonio, police said. His condition is unknown at the time.
ORIGINAL STORY: Alejandra Cuevas’ 14-year-old son, Simon, was killed right after school. Four months later, only one of the three suspects the San Antonio Police Department is looking for have been caught.
“It’s still so unreal,” Alejandra Cuevas said.
On April 16, after school dismissal, Simon was seen on a surveillance video walking away from the school with a group of people. Moments after he was seen on the camera footage, Simon was beaten, shot and killed.
“We thought that there was patrolling in the area,” Alejandra Cuevas said. “After school, usually they have administration outside. Usually, they have like a cop car, the school cop coming up and down the street. So, it is just upsetting that they didn’t have those extra resources that could have prevented this.”
Since then, Cuevas and the community have been fighting for her son’s case to be solved.
SAPD arrested Fernando Flores, 18, four months after Simon was killed. Caesar Tijerina, 20, has an arrest warrant for capital murder.
On Friday, Tijerina shot himself at a home in Laredo, police said. He was airlifted to a hospital in San Antonio. His condition is unknown at the time.
Officers are also searching for a third suspect who is a minor, so the department isn’t providing any identifying information on them, SAPD said.
“There’s still so many unanswered questions that we have about that day,” Alejandra Cuevas said.
She said she still has no idea why the shooting happened and wishes her son was somewhere else at the time.
This school year, Brewer Academy is closed. According to San Antonio Independent School District, it’s not because of the murder that happened two blocks from the school.
Instead, SAISD said students in alternative school are at the Estrada campus, where they were previously. SAISD said Estrada was having maintenance repairs, and that’s why students were at Brewer Academy last school year.
“I wish that the move would have been sooner because then we probably wouldn’t be here today,” Alejandra Cuevas said.
She said the memorial where Simon was killed is a “sad reminder of what happened.”
Now, Alejandra Cuevas wants justice for her son. For her, justice is a sentence.
“For everyone involved to be held accountable, for them to get time, for them to have to go to prison,” she said.
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