This week marked 50 years since Dallas police officer Darrell Cain shot and killed 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez, leading to the rare murder conviction of a city cop.
A public conversation Tuesday will focus on continued justice for Rodriguez and other children killed by police officers. Historians, legal experts and community members will discuss Rodriguez’s killing, and also the murder of Jordan Edwards, a 15-year-old boy killed in 2017 by Balch Springs police officer Roy Oliver.
About 2 a.m. July 24, 1973, Dallas police were investigating a vending machine robbery at a gas station in what is now the Victory Park area. Officer Roy Arnold believed two of the boys running from the scene were Santos and his 13-year-old brother, David Rodriguez.
Arnold and Cain drove to the home of Carlos Miñez, where the boys were staying. In the middle of the night, they woke the entire family and brought David and Santos, in handcuffs, to the parking lot behind the gas station.
Cain, wanting a confession from Santos after the boys said they had not been involved, put a gun to the boy’s head. He pulled the trigger.
Cain was arrested on a murder charge but released on a $5,000 bond. He was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. He served half that time. Investigators found that David’s and Santos’ fingerprints did not match those at the crime scene.
Monday was designated as Santos Rodriguez Day by the city of Dallas, and community members gathered at City Hall to commemorate the his life.
Continuing to share Santos’ story is vital to keeping his memory alive for the next generation, former Dallas Morning News journalist Dianne Solis said. She will be the moderator of one of Tuesday’s panels.
Childhood is sacred, she said, and it’s important that what happened to Santos doesn’t continue to happen.
“Santos is — was — everyone’s child,” Solis said.
Sol Villasana, a civil trial lawyer who will speak at one of the panels, grew up in Dallas’ Little Mexico neighborhood, an area north of downtown that was largely Mexican American before highway and real estate development in the mid-1960s.
Growing up, he learned to avoid police because he knew several people from his community who had been impacted by police violence, he said. Santos’ murder was the first time he remembers such violence becoming widely publicized.
“It could have been us,” he said.
He said Santos’ death triggered a long-simmering concern about police violence.
Villasana was a student at Southern Methodist University when Santos was murdered. He attended the “March of Justice” for Rodriguez alongside thousands who marched toward City Hall, which at the time was near Main and Harwood streets.
He became a lawyer largely because of Santos’ murder, which has inspired him to work toward a better form of justice.
At the panel, he will join other legal experts and historians in showing how progress has been made, but police violence is still an issue.
Oliver’s conviction for the murder of Edwards was the first time a police officer had been found guilty of an on-duty killing in Texas since Santos’ death in 1973.
Ruben A. Arellano, vice president of the Dallas Mexican American Historical League, said Rodriguez’s murder was a pivotal moment for community organizing in Little Mexico. The former neighborhood, located near where Uptown is today, is where Santos lived.
“[Santos’ murder] was sort of that trigger, that spark that galvanized the community and unified not only local activists and politicians, but average everyday people — aunts, dads, grandparents, children. This really shook and moved the community,” Arellano said.
Arellano said it’s important to recognize history in order to move forward. The “Santos Vive 50″ symposium is not the end of the community’s fight for justice, he said. Instead, he hopes that it is the start of a brighter, more humane future for Dallas.
The two panels will be from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Latino Cultural Center, 2600 Live Oak St.
The center, the Santos Vive 50 Coalition and other Dallas organizations have hosted a march and screenings of the “Santos Vive” documentary, and will continue to host community events honoring Rodriguez throughout the week. More information can be found at https://www.santosrodriguez.org/.
