The radio alert said a gray pickup. The truck the sheriff shot 10 times was white.

[Elderberry]

San Antonio Express-News by Eric Dexheimer 8/29/2019

The radio alert said a gray pickup. The truck the sheriff shot 10 times was white.

The morning was sunny and bright last February when Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Lee Meadow noticed the pickup truck that just passed him on Interstate 10 was missing a front license plate. With the trooper’s lights flashing behind him, the driver eased to a stop on the right side of the highway just outside of Junction.

As Meadow approached the open window on the truck’s passenger side door a handgun suddenly appeared and a single shot blasted over his right shoulder. Meadow dropped to the ground and the truck sped off. The trooper ran back to his cruiser, radioing he'd been shot at and was in pursuit of a gray Chevy Colorado pickup.

Sheriff Hilario Cantu was in his office when he heard the radio traffic. He and Deputy Jack Noah jumped into a Kimble County cruiser. Noticing the shotgun he’d grabbed on the way out wasn’t loaded, Cantu exchanged it for Noah’s assault rifle.

The sheriff and his deputy stationed themselves at a highway exit just west of Junction. Noah set up close to the guardrail in case he had to quickly bail out. Soon the sheriff saw a pickup heading their way “at a high rate of speed” and suddenly switching lanes.

Cantu raised his rifle as the truck approached. He fired as it sped past, pocking the vehicle with a line of ten bullet holes that ran from the front panel across the passenger door and into the rear of the cab. The truck drifted off the road about a quarter-mile ahead.

“Sheriff Cantu then looked back and saw that the actual suspect vehicle being pursued was now approaching,” a report from that day states. The vehicle he’d shot into was not a gray Colorado, but a white Silverado.

“At this point,” according to the document, “Sheriff Cantu realized that he had fired on the wrong vehicle.”

Shooting at cars discouraged

Hugo Reyes was returning from his job in the West Texas oilfields to his home in Edinburg. As he drove east, he chatted on the phone with his wife, Amparo Villareal, and his father-in-law.

“He told me he saw the police on the side of the road,” Villarreal recalled. “He thought it was weird that they had big guns.”

“Suddenly we heard this ruckus. I thought he’d gotten distracted and he’d hit somebody. Then the phone cut off.”

There was no answer when she tried calling. When Villarreal finally got a call from her husband's phone it was from Cantu, she recalled. "He said he was the sheriff, and that [Hugo] had been shot. I said, 'How is that even possible? I was just with him on the phone.'"

More: https://www.expressnews.com/news/politics/texas/article/The-radio-alert-said-a-gray-pickup-The-truck-the-14395847.php

[Smokin Joe]

Going by that information, it looks like a sh*tshow. Bad shoot, and the county should be picking up some medical costs, replacing the vehicle, and lost time pay at an absolute minimum.