Kevan Baker wanted to forget Wanda Lopez's final moments. He ...

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742 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [43.3:711 After dispatcher Escochea signaled to patrol cars that a robbery and assault had occurred and that the attacker had escaped to the north of the Sigmor on foot, cop cars flooded the area. Within minutes after Wanda collapsed just outside the store, Escochea had every available unit in the city limits—over twenty—looking for the man who stabbed her. One of the first to the scene was a Sheriff’s Department Constable, Ruben Rivera. He and his partner, Carolyn Vargas, were driving back downtown after serving papers in a civil case. They detoured to the Sigmor after hearing Escochea’s emergency call. Rivera remembered a mosaic of officers: wildlife rangers, sheriffs’ deputies, city police, and state highway patrolmen, as well as plainclothed vice squad officers in unmarked cars. “[T]here was everything out there . . . combing the neighborhood.” Wolfy’s 2 Teresa Barrera’s home A1 Sigmor Shamrock Ziebart’s Harley -Davidson Phase III Nightclub C B D 3 Armando Garcia’s home E Lebowitz Furniture Arrest Location 4 Middle School Nursing Home 5 Gulf Skating Rink 7 Circle K 6 Domino’s Pizza Figure 4: Map of the area where the manhunt took place. The Sigmor Shamrock station is Point A1 on the left. As police converged on the area, officers and residents radioed and called in information from the warren of dark narrow streets, shabby wood-frame houses, interlocking yards, and alleyways. Mixed
2012] Los Tocayos Carlos, Part I, Chapter 2 743 up with Mejia’s BOLOs on the tape was a jumble of clipped and urgent reports coming from many directions, including some from places so far outside the neighborhood that, in retrospect, they were beyond the reach of a man fleeing the Sigmor on foot. Among the din of one-off calls were three intense bursts of radio traffic, each concentrated in time and place. The first flurry of sightings by officers came from the two blocks of Dodd Street that run north from the Sigmor station in the direction Kevan Baker saw the assailant headed (Points A1, 2, and 3 on Figure 4). The calls peaked where Dodd intersects the more heavily trafficked McArdle Road (Point 3). The second set of sightings rolled east along McArdle for fourteen blocks, past a city park with ball fields, a middle school, and a nursing home (Points 3 to 6 and 7). The sightings became especially intense around the intersection of McArdle and Kostoryz Road where there was a Domino’s Pizza on one side of McArdle and a Circle K convenience store on the other side (Points 6 and 7). The third burst of calls came from way back west towards the Sigmor, in the bungalows and yards behind the Phase III Club and Lebowitz Furniture where the Arsuagas had seen a man jogging past (Points B to E). At DeLuna’s trial, Dispatcher Escochea called the first burst of activity along Dodd Street “a hectic situation as far as radio traffic was concerned.” “Units were just throwing out [radio] traffic” as officers closely pursued a man running north from the Sigmor. The first officers to join the hunt were two unnamed patrolmen in Car 155. Then Officer Thomas Mylett, the Corpus police officer Escochea had initially tried to dispatch to the Sigmor, arrived at the scene. He was followed by Constables Ruben Rivera and Carolyn Vargas, as well as Corpus Christi police officer Mark Schauer. They all had been told to go where eyewitness Kevan Baker had pointed when the first officer reached the Sigmor—in “the immediate area in back of the store,” “the area north of the station down Dodd Street.” Constable Rivera remembered pulling into the driveway of the gas station just behind the ambulance. “Someone came forward and pointed in the direction of Dodd Street and hollered ‘he ran that way.’” Rivera and his partner turned right onto Dodd, stopped the car at the next block (Point 2) and started off on foot to search for the suspect where the witness had indicated.
Page 1 and 2: CHAPTER 2: MANHUNT Kevan Baker want
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