Police Chief Bill McManus attributed rising crime in San Antonio to the department being understaffed during public safety town hall meeting in March. Credit: Shutterstock / Moab Republic

Family members of a 46-year-old San Antonio woman shot and killed by a trio of police officers on Friday said they plan to sue the city, the Express-News reports.

Alexis Tovar, 24, the sister of shooting victim Melissa Perez, said she retained the Packard Law Firm to represent her in the civil suit, which is expected to be filed sometime Monday or Tuesday, according to the daily.

Perez was having a mental health crisis when she cut the wires to the external fire alarm system at her apartment complex located in the 6200 block of Old Pearsall Road at around 2 a.m. Friday morning, Police Chief William McManus told reporters at a Friday press conference.

Three SAPD personnel — Alfred Flores, Eleazar Alejandro and Nathaniel Villalobos — tried to communicate with Perez through a window in her apartment, after which she appeared to have lunged at the window with a hammer, breaking the glass. The three officers then opened fire, McManus said, citing body cam footage.

Perez was pronounced dead at the scene.

“The shooting officers’ actions were not consistent with SAPD’s policy and training,” McManus told reporters. “They placed themselves in a situation where they used deadly force, which was not reasonable given all the circumstances as we now understand them.”

The three officers were arrested and charged with murder Friday afternoon. All three have been suspended from the force without pay while SAPD Internal Affairs and Homicide along with the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office Civil Rights Division investigate, according to McManus.

Daniel Packard, the lead attorney representing the Perez Family, told reporters over the weekend that the shooting is representative of larger issues within SAPD and its training.

“Even more egregious is the fact that there were three officers that pulled the trigger. And so you can’t really say this is a rogue officer who just lost his head and didn’t follow policy,” Packard told the Express-News. “Three officers thought it was ok to gun this woman down when she’s in her own house, behind the door.”

It’s unclear how much money the Perez family will seek in the suit.

Perez’s killing is the latest San Antonio police shooting to grab national headlines. Outrage also followed the shootings of AJ Hernandez and Erik Cantu, both of whom were teenagers at the time.

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