Roberto Reyna was killed on his 36th birthday, when a bullet left him bleeding in the front yard of his grandmother's house.
Police say he was shot around 1 a.m. on July 19, after meeting a man outside of the home in East Austin's Govalle neighborhood. Reyna was still breathing when medics arrived, according to officials, but he died within an hour.
His death was one of 24 in 2013 that police have classified as a murder. But nearly six months after Reyna's death, his is the only 2013 case in which officers have yet to identify a suspect or a promising person of interest.
"Every single day is a difficult day," said Reyna's mother, Eva.
Police often close out the year with only a few unsolved cases in Austin, but 2013 saw fewer killings than in the past three years. Austin also had one-quarter to one-half the number of homicides than some cities of a similar population size that the Austin Police Department sometimes uses as a benchmark.
Violent-crimes Cmdr. Mark Spangler said Austin's violent crime rate has generally decreased over the past two decades, partly because of the department's efforts to reduce the number of assaults, he said, and a number of good-quality, nearby hospitals available to treat trauma patients.
He also credited the public's collaboration with the department. Residents are genuinely concerned about their community, Spangler said.
"This isn't a Detroit or a Philadelphia or a Houston, or even a San Antonio," Spangler said. "If we were to look just 70 miles to the south of us, where the homicide rate is almost triple of where we're at, I think everybody would probably agree Austin is a different community."
According to preliminary data from the San Antonio Police Department, there were 72 killings in that city last year.
Though there were more than 24 homicides in Austin in 2013, police have so far only brought murder charges, or suspect the killing was a murder, in those cases. Of the 24 deaths currently classified by police as murders, Reyna was one of 11 people killed with a gun in 2013. Shooting deaths were the most common, according to court records, followed by stabbings, which resulted in six deaths.
While some cases drew a lot of attention, such as the seemingly random death of David Villarreal, who officials say was killed by Matthew Bacon with a hammer and kitchen knife, there were nine fewer killings than the 33 deaths in 2012 that police classified as murders.
In 2011, there were 27 people killed, and in 2010 there were 38. The two years prior -- 2009 and 2008 -- were more comparable to 2013, with 22 and 23 slayings, respectively.
But police officials caution against drawing conclusions from the city's homicide statistics in any given year because, they say, the numbers fluctuate.
Eight, or about a third, of the cases in 2013 are considered family violence killings, for example. But violent-crimes Lt. Gena Curtis said that number varies, accounting for about a quarter of the cases in 2012 and 2011, and a third of the cases in 2010. In 2009, only one, or 5 percent of the cases, met the state's definition for family violence, according to police.
Shelia Hargis, a homicide analyst at the department, noted that there also seem to be more cases involving potentially mentally ill suspects.
Of the 24 cases in 2013, four involved a suspect who was potentially mentally ill, police said.
That seems high, Hargis said, but it's not an identifier that the department tracks in analyzing homicide data. In past years, she said, it seems there is typically only one suspect, if any, who appears to have symptoms of a mental illness.
Sgt. Michael King, with the department's crisis intervention team, said the number of cases the team's officers investigated in 2013 have increased to more than 10,000 from 6,361 in 2007. However, King said he thinks the increase is related to several factors, including training, so that officers are better at identifying possible symptoms of mental illness and noting it in the department's internal data system so other officers know what to expect if they interact with those people again.
"We have made huge improvements to train all officers to recognize and be aware of behavioral health issues," King said.
Austin's growing population could also play a role in the spike, he said.
Considering Austin's fast-paced growth in recent years, homicide Sgt. Brian Miller said he was glad there were only about two dozen slayings last year. Among cities with similar populations, there were 125 killings in Indianapolis last year, 94 in Jacksonville, Fla., and 58 in Charlotte, N.C., and its county, Mecklenburg, police officials in those cities said.
"One homicide is too many," Miller said, but as the number of Austin residents has increased, the number of homicides haven't followed suit.
The deadliest years in Austin's history appear to be 1982, 1983 and 1984, Miller said, when 57, 58 and 59 people were killed.
Cases 'cleared'
It's not unusual for a suspect to elude police in a homicide case, as has happened in Reyna's killing, but it's not exactly common. In the past four years, more than 75 percent of homicide cases have been "cleared" by an arrest or other means, such as the suspect dying.
Nineteen people have been arrested in connection with 2013 homicide cases. That number doesn't include a man who was arrested but not indicted in the September death of Malachi McBeth, who was found shot in the 4700 block of East Riverside Drive and later died at the hospital. Police detained a suspect but released him after the Travis County district attorney's office decided there wasn't enough evidence to charge him, according to officials, and when the case was later presented to a grand jury, jurors declined to indict him on criminal charges.
Also not included is the arrest of George De La Cruz, who was charged with murder three and a half years after his estranged wife, Julie Ann Gonzalez, vanished. Gonzalez was reported missing by her family in March 2010, one day after De La Cruz said he last saw her. Police first thought that Gonzalez had vanished voluntarily, but they later concluded that her disappearance was criminal and named De La Cruz as a person of interest. A grand jury indicted him on a murder charge in September, but Gonzalez's body hasn't been found.
According to officials and court records, all of the 18 cases in which arrests have been made are pending except for one: In July, Kennet Rachelle Haywood pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the February stabbing of her partner, Tyesha Taylor.
In some cases, suspects have been identified but not arrested. In November, Roman Huerta was accused of killing Lazaro Rodriguez, who was found dead after police say Huerta intentionally ran over the man in a parking lot during an argument. Police believe Huerta has fled to Mexico. Meanwhile, suspects or persons of interest have been identified in the deaths of Jose Humberto Vela, Miguel Angel Contreras and Brian Pentecost, according to police, though their names haven't been made public.
Vela was found dead after he was fatally shot in April, and Contreras died after a shooting in September. Pentecost died in September from a traumatic brain injury more than a week after police say a man hit him downtown.
Family seeks closure
Reyna's family, including his teenage daughter who wept during a news conference in July, have pleaded for the public to help find the person who killed Reyna, a father of three known as "Robbie." But months later, Miller said detectives still don't have much to go on. And it becomes increasingly difficult to solve homicide cases as more time passes.
But, he said, each unsolved cases is "usually" a good tip or hit away from being solved.
For the department, it would be one more case cleared.
For Reyna's mother, it would mean closure.
She last saw her son the night before he died, when she brought him a birthday dinner of hot wings, fries and peaches, and some strawberry soda to wash it down. The day after Christmas, she cried quietly on her couch, sitting feet from a tiny saddle shoe that Reyna wore as an infant, now resting on an altar she made to remember him.
Until she can afford a headstone at his grave site, she mourns his death there.
Copyright 2014 - Austin American-Statesman
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
