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

748 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [43.3:711
underneath a truck” on Easter (Point D), then was seen “heading
eastbound on Nemec” (parallel to Points D to E, on Nemec).
Almost as one, the fifteen or twenty patrol cars that had
rushed to McArdle and Kostoryz (Points 6 and 7) headed about a mile
back west to Easter and Nemec Streets (Point D). In a flurry of
broadcasts, units reported new positions, including at a staging area
on Nemec just behind Lebowitz.
Nine minutes later, just before 8:50 p.m. and about forty
minutes after Wanda screamed, the first report of an arrest came in.
Constables Ruben Rivera and Carolyn Vargas initially spotted the
suspect. He was lying in a puddle under a second pickup truck on
Franklin Street off Nemec (Point E). He had no shirt, shoes or socks
on, just black “slacks,” and no moustache, just a day or two’s worth of
stubble on his face.
The man begged the constables not to hurt him. “Don’t shoot
me! You’ve already got me!” Rivera noticed that he reeked of alcohol.
Corpus police officers Schauer and Mylett showed up at the
end and helped Rivera pull the suspect sideways from under the
truck and over a cement curb onto a grassy area next to the street
where they handcuffed him. Although Constables Rivera and Vargas
first sighted and caught the man, Police Department officers Schauer
and Mylett took credit for the arrest.
Twenty seconds later, Schauer confirmed their prize over the
radio frequency. “Okay, we got one suspect in custody.” Mylett, who
moonlighted weekends as a bouncer at the Casino Club, immediately
recognized the suspect as someone who frequented the Casino. He
was twenty-year-old Carlos DeLuna. Mylett remembered DeLuna
well. Two weeks before, he arrested DeLuna for being drunk and
disorderly in the Casino Club parking lot. The dispatcher confirmed
that DeLuna had a “28”—a criminal record.
The truck DeLuna was under (Point D) was parked exactly a
block east of Barrera’s truck (Point E). The most direct route between
the two was to cross Easter Street from Barrera’s home, pass through
the front, then the back, yard of Barrera’s neighbor Armando Garcia,
then pass through the back and front yards of the house behind
Garcia’s.
On Sunday, two days later, Garcia cut his lawn along that
route. As he did, he found a trail of discarded clothes. Two white
tennis shoes were on the side of his house between the front and back
yards. In the rear corner of his backyard, Garcia found a white dress