BEXAR COUNTY, Texas – Hours after San Antonio police shot and killed Melissa Perez, jurors on Wednesday watched SAPD detective Ronald Soto’s in-person conversation with her family.
Soto, who led the investigation into the SAPD shooting death of Melissa Perez in 2023, also got into multiple back-and-forths on Tuesday with members of the joint defense team tasked with representing three former San Antonio police officers.
Soto admitted to filing arrest warrants for the three ex-officers, despite Perez dying of two gunshot wounds, but the detective also questioned why some responding officers were in a rush to enter Perez’s apartment before the shooting.
“What was your rush to walk a warrant?” co-defense attorney Jason Goss said to Soto on Tuesday. “That’s my question.”
“I can ask (you) the same. What was the rush to get into the apartment?” Soto responded.
“What was the rush to walk the warrant?” Goss asked Soto.
“I had probable cause,” Soto said.
“That’s not a reason,” Goss said. “You did not have probable cause that all three people shot and killed Melissa Perez.”
“What was the rush in walking a warrant?” Goss asked Soto again.
“I’ve already answered it,” Soto responded.
Soto was first called to the stand on Monday.
Ex-SAPD officers Eleazar Alejandro, Alfred Flores and Nathaniel Villalobos are on trial for the shooting death of Perez, 46.
The department has since terminated Alejandro, Flores and Villalobos from the force.
Below is the timeline from Wednesday’s court proceedings.
8:18 a.m. - Jurors entered the courtroom.
8:19 a.m. - Ben Sifuentes, co-defense attorney of ex-SAPD officer Eleazar Alejandro, resumed cross-examination of SAPD detective Ronald Soto.
Soto was SAPD’s lead investigator of the Melissa Perez murder case.
8:23 a.m. - Sifuentes introduced Soto’s prosecution guide, which included a detailed timeline of events from the early morning hours of June 23, 2023.
8:27 a.m. - While Soto acknowledged he filed a thorough review of some body-worn camera videos in the prosecution guide, he said that he “did not do detailed entries” of other body-worn camera videos.
“Like I said, I went through them, but I didn’t detail them,” Soto said.
“That’s not my question,” Sifuentes said. “My question is: you did not do as thorough of a review of the other body-worn cameras as you did — "
Soto interrupted Sifuentes.
“And my answer is: I did a thorough review. I just didn’t document it,” Soto said. “That’s my answer.”
Sifuentes asked Soto for clarification on what he meant.
“Are you saying you did a thorough review, but you didn’t write notes?” Sifuentes asked.
“I just didn’t document — I didn’t go through and do it step-by-step, like I did on these," Soto said.
“Aren’t you required to write down everything that you do in your case?” Sifuentes asked Soto.
“We keep notes. Yes, sir,” Soto responded.
“Where are those notes?” Sifuentes asked.
8:28 a.m. - Soto said he turned his notes on the case over to the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office prior to the trial.
Sifuentes asked the court for Soto’s notes to be turned over to the joint defense team “before we proceed.”
Bexar County co-prosecutor Daryl Harris told the court that Soto’s notes were already given to the defense.
“If he’s (Soto) telling this jury that he turned them over to the state, and we are to believe him, I want to see those notes,” Sifuentes said to presiding Judge Ron Rangel.
“Your Honor, they’ve been made available to the defense through discovery,” Harris said. “Everything that we’ve received we’ve turned over.”
Sifuentes said they did not have Soto’s notes.
8:29 a.m. - Rangel called for a hearing without the presence of jurors. The jury left the courtroom.
Sifuentes began asking Soto questions to begin the hearing.
“Did you turn them over (to the state) by email or hand delivery?” Sifuentes asked Soto.
Soto said he believed he scanned his handwritten notes and sent them to DA’s office.
Nico LaHood, a co-defense attorney for ex-SAPD officer Nathaniel Villalobos, asked Soto who from the prosecution requested his notes.
“I thought it was requested through you guys (the joint defense team) through them (the prosecution). That’s the way I interpreted it,” Soto said. “Sir, I don’t remember who.”
8:34 a.m. - Harris approached Soto and showed him a copy of Soto’s handwritten notes.
Harris said the state and Soto discussed the notes in April 2025.
The prosecution, who printed out a copy of Soto’s seven pages of notes while in court on Wednesday morning, claimed that the joint defense already had a copy of them.
“Everything we got, they (the prosecution) have,” Harris told the court.
8:41 a.m. - Of the seven pages worth of notes, Soto said he wrote at least five of those pages.
He also acknowledged that none of the seven pages written by Soto made any reference to body-worn camera video from the Perez shooting.
“Are you telling us that your earlier testimony that you had handwritten notes — " Sifuentes began asking before Soto interjected.
“I don’t recall saying I had handwritten notes for it,” Soto said. “I don’t recall saying that. You’re asking if I thoroughly reviewed it, and I was saying, ‘Yeah, I thoroughly reviewed it.’ And then you asked if I had notes, and I said, ‘Well, I have notes.’”
8:44 a.m. - While he turned in detailed notes on the body-worn cameras for five SAPD officers (Alejandro, ex-SAPD Sgt. Alfred Flores, Villalobos, Jesus Rojas and Jonathan Salinas) for the prosecution guide, Soto admitted that he didn’t have notes or any documentation specifically on body-worn camera video from the other 10 SAPD officers on scene.
8:45 a.m. - The hearing ended.
8:47 a.m. - Jurors reentered the courtroom.
8:48 a.m. - Sifuentes asked Rangel for the court reporter to “read back” Soto’s last interaction with the defense before the jury was excused.
8:51 a.m. - Soto admitted to jurors that he didn’t have notes or any documentation specifically on body-worn camera video from the other 10 SAPD officers on scene.
8:54 a.m. - Sifuentes asked Soto if the detective’s lack of notes on the 10 SAPD officers’ body-worn camera videos indicated a lack of a “thorough review.”
“I did not do a thorough review as I should have on that,” Soto said.
Soto also said he viewed enough body-camera video from five SAPD officers to determine “probable cause” to file an arrest affidavit for the three ex-officers currently on trial.
8:57 a.m. - Soto agreed with Sifuentes that, in order to establish probable cause that the ex-officers were not justified in their use of deadly force, Soto was required to look at “the totality of the circumstances.”
8:58 a.m. - However, when Sifuentes accused Soto of not providing the magistrate judge “the totality of the circumstances” for the arrest affidavit, Soto disagreed.
“I put what I need for the probable cause,” Soto told the court. “That’s my answer.”
“You’re being evasive. We know what the answer is,” Sifuentes said. “Just admit that you did not put the totality of the circumstances in the affidavit. It’s a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”
“All I need was to develop probable cause, sir, and put it in my affidavit,” Soto told the court. “That’s all I had to do.”
9:06 a.m. - Sifuentes showed SAPD officer Edwin Rivera’s body-worn camera SAPD from June 23, 2023, before the court.
9:25 a.m. - Based on Soto’s own user audit trail, the detective only watched Alejandro’s body-worn camera video from the Perez shooting on June 23, 2023.
9:37 a.m. - Soto told the jurors he didn’t look at all 15 SAPD responding officers’ body-worn camera video from start to finish regarding the Perez shooting.
“There’s no way I could have looked at every one of them, sir,” Soto said.
9:40 a.m. - Soto also told the court that he did not ask any superiors for more time to complete his investigation.
9:45 a.m. - Sifuentes presented a document, which he said was a transcript the defense made of Soto’s own body-worn camera video.
Sifuentes did not clarify what Soto’s body-worn camera video described in the transcript.
9:47 a.m. - Harris requested and was granted a voir dire with Soto.
“Detective, that document that’s in front of you. Have you ever seen that before?” Harris asked Soto.
“No, sir. I have not,” Soto said.
“Is it a transcript of a meeting that you had with the daughter of the deceased?” Harris asked Soto, in part.
“Well, that’s what it looks like, but I’ve never seen it in this form before,” Soto responded.
Harris objected to the defense’s presentation of the body-worn camera video transcript to the court.
“If they (the defense) would like, we can conditionally admit a copy (of the body-worn camera video) and play that to the jury as the best evidence, and then follow up with a hard copy afterwards,” Harris told Rangel.
9:48 a.m. - While Soto’s body-worn camera video was in the process of being queued up in court, jurors were given a short break.
10:07 a.m. - Jurors reentered the courtroom.
Sifuentes, who resumed questioning, began playing Soto’s body-worn camera video before the court.
10:12 a.m. - The video, which began at the 12:11 p.m. mark on June 23, 2023, showed Soto’s meeting with Perez’s family.
One portion of the video showed Soto telling the family that SAPD’s investigation, at the time, was “preliminary.”
10:14 a.m. - More of Soto’s body camera played before the court.
“One of the officers got hit with something,” Soto told the family, according to the video, in part. “I don’t know exactly what happened with that.”
Sifuentes asked Soto about whether he knew what the officer was hit with while he talked to the family.
“The candle. I knew at that time,” Soto responded. “But I just didn’t tell them that.”
10:15 a.m. - Soto’s body-worn camera video conversation with the Perez family continued.
“Unfortunately, she (Perez) was inside of her apartment,” Soto told Perez’s relatives, in part. “The officers were talking, conversating with her. During that time inside the apartment, she was shot by officers. And she passed, obviously, there. Like I said, we’re still trying to figure out all the details. It’s an ongoing process. We’ve got to take our time and go through everything.”
10:15 a.m. - Sifuentes asked Soto about his one of his quotes to the family, specifically about SAPD taking “our time” to “go through everything” in its shooting investigation.
“Was that a truthful statement?” Sifuented asked Soto.
“In general, I was letting them know that we had to go through stuff,” Soto said as he looked at jurors. “It was something I said in general.”
“Sir, my questions require a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Was it a truthful statement, yes or no?” Sifuentes asked.
“Yes. We still had to go through stuff,” Soto said.
10:16 a.m. - More of Soto’s video played.
In the video, Alexis Tovar, who is Perez’s daughter, told Soto that Perez was diagnosed with schizophrenia and struggled with substance abuse.
10:18 a.m. - Another relative in Soto’s body-worn camera video told the detective that Perez went to the Starlite Recovery Center in Kerrville and was also emergency detained (ED).
10:19 a.m. - Soto acknowledged that he failed to get information on Perez’s time at the treatment center and her emergency detentions before filing arrest warrants for Alejandro, Flores and Villalobos.
10:21 a.m. - Relatives told Soto that Perez began having more hallucinations and engage in more schizophrenic episodes.
Hours later, Soto also did not disclose in the arrest affidavit or the prosecution guide that Perez may have been a potential danger to responding SAPD officers.
10:44 a.m. - Soto did not write down any information regarding Perez’s mental health state to his supervisors or the Bexar County District Attorney’s office.
11:59 a.m. - Rangel concluded court proceedings for the day. The trial is expected to resume on Thursday morning.
Background
On June 23, 2023, Melissa Perez, 46, experienced a mental health crisis inside her Southwest Side apartment, where SAPD body camera footage showed she was fatally shot by ex-SAPD officers Eleazar Alejandro, Alfred Flores and Nathaniel Villalobos.
The case drew widespread attention and sparked debate over police response protocols.
Alejandro, Flores and Villalobos each face charges in connection with Perez’s death.
All three charged will be tried together, which will make for a packed courtroom.
Former prosecutor-turned-defense attorney Meredith Chacon said the plan to try all three together means each defense team has agreed on some kind of joint strategy.
“It indicates a sharing of resources, and they’re all working together on this defense,” Chacon said.
Each defendant has their own team of lawyers:
- Alfred Flores is represented by Thom Nisbet, Christian Neumann and David Christian.
- Eleazar Alejandro is represented by Ben Sifuentes and Mario Del Prado, a former division chief in the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office.
- Nathaniel Villalobos is represented by former Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood and his law partners Jay Norton, Jason Goss and Patrick Ballantyne.
As for the state, prosecutors include Felony Criminal Trial Division Chief David Lunan and Daryl Harris.
The trial is being presided over by Judge Ron Rangel of the 379th Criminal District Court.
Ahead of jury selection, a pretrial hearing became heated as attorneys sparred over key issues ahead of the trial. Defense attorneys argued with prosecutors over which evidence and legal arguments should be allowed during the proceedings.
Among the issues discussed was a federal judge’s recent decision to dismiss a civil lawsuit against the officers — a ruling the defense wants jurors to hear about. Prosecutors opposed that motion.
Defense attorneys also objected to any discussion of the Castle Doctrine, or “protection of property” laws, during the trial. They argued it is irrelevant to the facts of the case.
Rangel has yet to rule on those motions.
If convicted, Flores and Alejandro each face up to life in prison. Villalobos, who is facing an aggravated assault by a public servant charge, also faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
For a full look back at this case, watch the KSAT Open Court video below:
More coverage of this trial on KSAT: