Nearly 40 years ago, a 12-year-old named Santos Rodriguez was killed with a bullet to the brain fired by a Dallas police officer. The boy died in the police car’s front seat during an interrogation in the old Little Mexico neighborhood of Dallas.
Santos’ death left a moral wound in the Mexican-American community and with others, too. Now, memorial events are planned to remember his short life and assess how much has changed in the past four decades in politics, police relations and civil rights.
At Santos' grey granite headstone in the old Oakland Cemetery a few weeks back, Roberto Corona stood in the deep thought of his prayers. Corona, a community organizer with SMU's Embrey Human Rights Program, never knew Santos, but he said he felt connected. "I was thinking he was like a little brother."
Corona returned to the sprawling cemetery turf with others a few weeks later.
“How could someone do that do another human being?” said Rais Bhuiyan, who himself was nearly killed by a white supremist at a Dallas gas station a few days after the 9-11 attacks. Bhuiyan is now a frequent speaker against violence.
"He was just a normal kid born in a bad situation," said Olinka Green, as she touched the gravestone.
Corona and the others have started a Facebook page in Santos’ memory and to provide details about memorial events.
Through the years, Santos inspired other homages in Baptist, Methodist and Catholic churches. This time, the story of Santos brings together communities of Mexican-Americans, Mexican immigrants, African-Americans, Pakistan and Bangladesh immigrants and whites.
The plans include a panel discussion on July 24th at the Latino Cultural Center to look at the past and what’s changed since. Folks brought together by SMU’s Human Rights Program plan a memorial event or two, either at the cemetery, the site where Santos died, or his old playground of Pike’s Park.
Theater director Cora Cardona and her husband Jeff Hurst may restage a play based on Santos' life that first debuted some 20 years ago. Santos' death still haunts many, Cardona said.
“When you touch a child, that is when the community bursts,” Cardona said. “He becomes their son, too.”
Indeed, it did. Four days after Santos took a bullet near his left ear, a small riot broke out in downtown Dallas after hundreds marched down to police headquarters to protest police brutality against Mexican-Americans and African-Americans. Five police officers were injured and 38 persons were arrested, according to news clips of that time.
In one of his last photos, Santos peers out with toothy grin under thick wavy hair and large dark eyes.
He was a suspect in a burglary of less than $10 from a vending machine at a Fina gas station at 2301 Cedar Springs Road.
At the time of the shooting, his young mother, Bessie Garcia Rodriguez, was in prison for the murder of a man some said had abused her. She was released on a three-day pass to attend the funeral. She had five children, including her son David who was one year older than Santos. David sat in the police car when his brother died in what he described as a game of Russian roulette.
At the time of the shooting, the owner of the Fina gas station told a Dallas Morning News reporter he doubted Santos had committed the burglary. An official investigation found fingerprints didn't even match those of the dead boy.
Police officer Darrell L. Cain testified Santos denied burglarizing the vending machine, according to the murder trial transcripts. Santos’ last words, Cain said, were: “I am telling the truth.”
