Neighbor’s video captures police killing of veteran
Armed former Marine who had been drinking, suffering from PTSD was shot in front of his wife and kids
Marine veteran Joe Castillanos was walking away in the split-second before three Houston police officers fired upon him, fatally striking him in front of his wife and children.
His wife sobbed, “He’s a veteran,” as officers crowded around her husband’s body, shining their flashlights on him in the 6500 block of Capridge Drive. “He’s a Marine,” she repeatedly cried out, according to a neighbor’s video of the Memorial Day shooting.
The 38-year-old man was shot to death May 25 around 1:30 a.m., becoming the sixth civilian since April 21 to be killed by
Houston police. The recorded moments leading up to his death, and after, are among two of those incidents in a fiveweek span where video footage other than police body cameras has surfaced.
The wife, Joelaunda Castillanos, turned down an initial invite by Houston police in the hours after her husband’s death to watch the police body camera footage, attorney T.J. Solomon said.
“That wasn’t something that she was prepared to do just yet,” said Solomon, who has requested a copy of the footage for possible litigation.
On the night of his death, Castillanos — a combat veteran turned postal worker — had been drinking, his wife said in a 911 call. He was armed, emotional and had already fired his weapon at least once, according to police radio traffic. A dispatcher said the couple also had been having marital problems.
The wife wanted help in talking her husband down, Solomon said. She told police that he was a retired Marine undergoing treatment for PTSD.
Her call was classified as “a suicide threat with a weapon/welfare check,” au
thorities said.
A portion of the shooting was captured on a neighbor’s cellphone video, while a security camera from a nearby home caught the moments leading up to his death. That footage shows that police encountered Castillanos walking down a sidewalk in the southeast Houston subdivision.
Solomon said Castillanos’ wife had been driving alongside him at the time with their two children, ages 7 and 11, in the car.
“She was trying to cheer him up,” Solomon said, quoting Castillanos’ wife as telling him, “Let’s go back in the house. It’s going to be OK. We want you to live another day.”
As the officers arrived, Castillanos turned to face them, video shows. The first officer told the wife she would need to get the gun away from him, Solomon said.
Two more officers jumped out of a vehicle with their weapons drawn, according to security footage. Their vehicle was not left in park and rolled backward. A bang is heard in the video as the police SUV rolled into the other officer’s vehicle.
The officers repeatedly shouted profanity-laced orders for Castillanos to drop the weapon.
Another angle of the confrontation, taken from across the street, showed Castillanos walking away at one point. A man holding the camera pointed the phone downward just as a barrage of gunfire was heard.
The footage returns to show Castillanos on the ground.
In that unseen moment, police said Castillanos ignored several demands to drop the weapon and then turned toward the officers “and raised the gun in their direction,” according to a news release.
Solomon contends that Castillanos’ wife and a neighbor saw that he was shot with his back turned — but bodycam footage will eventually show more of what happened, she said.
“Even if he turned, even if he pointed his weapon at him — they goaded him into it,” Solomon said, accusing the officers of failing to de-escalate the deadly confrontation by approaching him instead.
“His wife saw (the shooting) and their two kids saw it,” Solomon said. “Bullets whizzed by her head when her husband was shot. Bullets lodged into a neighbor’s truck four houses away. She was in the direct line of police fire.”
During a news briefing, Executive Assistant Chief Troy Finner said Castillanos also fired “several times into the ground” prior to his death but neither of Solomon’s publicly-available videos show that moment.
Solomon said she has longer versions of the footage but she is not ready to share it.
Following the in-custody death of longtime Houstonian George Floyd in Minneapolis, Police Chief Art Acevedo drew criticism for refusing to release the body cam videos of recent officer-involved shootings in his jurisdiction, citing the wishes of the families. The other men to die in the recent shootings are Nicholas Chavez, 27; Christopher Aguirre, 28; Adrian Medearis, 48; Rayshard Scales, 30; and Randy Lewis, 38.
Last week, Acevedo said relatives of Chavez and Medearis asked that police withhold the footage of their loved one’s death. He also said the relative of another police shooting victim has not yet come by to see the footage herself, without elaborating on who that was.
Solomon said Castillanos’ wife does not want the footage to be publicly released for now.
The Houston Police Department’s internal investigation into the shooting continues, as well as a separate probe by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office’s Civil Rights Division, whose prosecutors will present evidence from the incident to a grand jury to determine whether the killing was justified.
None of the six recent officerinvolved shootings have yet to go before a grand jury, according to the district attorney’s office.