Authorities said a San Antonio teen was attacked by multiple “juveniles” before gunfire erupted on the west side Wednesday afternoon.
SAN ANTONIO — As San Antonio authorities continue to look for a group of kids who ambushed a 14-year-old Wednesday afternoon – including whoever shot and killed him – SAPD Chief William McManus posted a simple message to social media.
“Working w SAISD (sic), I’m optimistic we’ll clear this case,” the police chief said in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) shortly after he shared details of the deadly incident in the area of South Elmendorf and Merida Street.
That’s just a block away from Brewer Academy, an alternative San Antonio ISD school that services middle and high school-aged students. Officers arrived around 2 p.m. after hearing about the shooting, where McManus said they found the unidentified victim dead at the scene.
It’s believed he was jumped by seven other peers as school was letting out, all of them Brewer Academy students and all between 14 and 17 years old.
“Don’t know what the altercation was a result of,” McManus said. “But there were seven of them beating on the eighth. At some point when the eighth was on the ground, one of the seven pulled out a gun and shot him.”
As of late Wednesday afternoon, police didn’t indicate they had anyone detained in the incident.
SAISD Police Chief Johnny Reyes called the attack an “isolated incident” and said his officers plan to review video that could point them to the suspects. He also said Brewer Academy students who walk home “have a tendency to stash weapons on the path home” that they can easily obtain after leaving school.
Officials said there was no reported incident of this magnitude on campus Wednesday. They also don’t know at this point if the firearm used to shoot the 14-year-old was on campus, but district police said they’ll work to find out if it was.
“The district will do everything to support the family in terms of crisis counseling and any support that they need,” Superintendent Jaime Aquino said.
The murder and ensuing investigation comes as San Antonio police report a 19% decrease in overall crime for the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same window of time in 2024—including a 13% drop in violence crime.
Over the first three months of the year, San Antonio police responded to 61 reports of gunfire in the zip code where Brewer sits, according to public SAPD data. Over the same period in 2024, officers received 73 calls for shootings.