A Texas city commissioner was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police and a sheriff’s deputy who responded to a domestic call in Mission, officials said.
They responded to the call at Sullivan City Commissioner Gabriel Salinas’s home, finding his girlfriend with stab wounds. Her 4-year-old son was also discovered with a head injury, authorities told The Associated Press.
Robert Dominguez, the police chief in Mission, said officials then saw Salinas, 39, who shot at the responding officers, prompting them to engage with the suspect, according to AP.
Salinas then barricaded himself inside the home. After several hours of non-contact, police sent in a robot and discovered him dead inside a bathroom.
“As far as I know right now, it was not a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I think that he died as a result of being hit in the transfer of fire,” Dominguez told the news outlet. A Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputy was also involved in the shootout, he said.
The woman who was injured in the domestic incident is expected to recover, officials told AP. Her son was also treated and released from the hospital.
An autopsy will be carried out to determine whether Salinas was under the influence of drugs.
Dominguez noted that COVID-19 has taken its toll on the community, which is located near the U.S.-Mexico border.
“People have been in quarantine in their homes trying to avoid the virus and so forth, and tempers flare and sometimes unfortunately people don’t know how to deal with situations like that,” he said, according to The Monitor.
The Texas Rangers and Texas Department of Public Safety are both investigating the shooting, the report said.
