BEXAR COUNTY, Texas – Jurors on Tuesday were shown dozens of photos from the crime scene where 46-year-old Melissa Perez was shot and killed by San Antonio police officers on June 23, 2023.
Prosecutors said Perez was experiencing a mental health crisis when she cut the fire alarm system at her Southwest Side apartment complex.
Officers attempted to arrest her when body camera footage showed Perez swinging a hammer at them, prompting the officers to open fire.
Former SAPD officers Alfred Flores, Eleazar Alejandro and Nathaniel Villalobos are charged with her shooting death.
The images, presented in court by SAPD crime scene investigator Yvonne Diaz, included photos of shell casings and scenes from inside Perez’s apartment.
Jurors also viewed the actual hammer seen in the body camera footage.
Ben Sifuentes, a co-defense attorney for ex-SAPD officer Eleazar Alejandro, asked the court during a hearing without jurors for the admittance of an affidavit, a search warrant signed by a magistrate judge and crime scene photos taken by a different crime scene investigator.
Mario Del Prado, Sifuentes’ co-defense attorney, said the defense offered the search warrant as evidence, not as the truth, but to combat the prosecution’s argument that there were “criminal actions against police officers.”
“The prosecuting agency is the San Antonio Police Department. They went and got an affidavit and a search warrant for this, saying that it was an aggravated assault on a peace officer,” Del Prado said.
“So, for them (the prosecution) to be able to say, ‘Oh look, our prosecuting agency admitted, produced this. It was an aggravated assault on a police officer. That was the basis — their authority for going into the apartment that night.’ And I think the jury is entitled to know that, once again, the state’s speaking out of both sides of their mouth.”
Rangel agreed to admit the affidavit and search warrant to the court, with specific language to jurors that says it is not being offered “for the truth of the matter as heard.”
“It’s being offered to rebut the state’s argument,” Rangel said.
Court proceedings are expected to resume on Wednesday afternoon.
More coverage of this trial on KSAT: