Two months after Alejandro “Alex” Torres III was shot and killed by police officers responding to a 911 call in the LBJ Gardens neighborhood on St. Croix, his mother and sister say the V.I. Police Department has yet to update them on its internal investigation.
“I never heard from them,” Torres’s mother, Luz Fulgence, told the Source Wednesday. “I have called the detective them that was doing the case for my son, and they were supposed to have returned to me and come here — to sit with me and talk — but they never came back. They never came.”
Fulgence showed the Source a call history showing several calls to and from a VIPD detective on July 17 — the day Torres was killed — and July 18, as well as an outgoing call on Aug. 11. Torres’s sister, Patrisia Torres, added that the family also hasn’t received information about his autopsy.
“I mean, the autopsy will say that he was shot, but that’s something that at least they could have called and been like, ‘if you want copies of the autopsy ….’ Nothing,” she said. “My mom and I haven’t got nothing.”
Torres, 48, was killed after Fulgence called 911 seeking help in calming down Torres — who was yelling in the street. Police have said little about the incident beyond a brief statement in July claiming that “a struggle ensued with the son and both officers who responded. At that time, one of the officers discharged their firearm, striking the male once.”
More recently, a VIPD spokesperson confirmed that the officer who shot Torres remains on administrative leave pending an investigation by the department’s Internal Affairs Division. Fulgence reiterated to the Source Wednesday that law enforcement never spoke to her after she called 911.
“They never came here,” she said, adding that she called again asking where the police were and was told that officers had already arrived at LBJ. She said she then heard Torres screaming for help, but she was scared to run outside because she didn’t know who was there with him.
“I just hear ‘pow,’ one shot,” she said. Fulgence said she called 911 again and was told, again, that police were already on the scene in LBJ Gardens. “That’s when I hung up the phone, I opened my gate, and I run and I went behind the other houses, and that’s where I see my son on the ground.”
Fulgence said she’s called police before to help with her son, who had a history of drug use and who received treatment for a mental health condition, and she was expecting law enforcement to talk to her before doing anything else.
“Alex didn’t have no weapon,” she said. “Alex had nothing on him, only thing Alex had on was pants — not even a shoe on his feet — and you guys just decide to give him one bullet in his chest.”
In the two months since Torres was killed, police officers on St. Thomas also shot and killed 36-year-old Tyler Simpson while responding to a burglary call in Frenchman’s Bay. The Source has repeatedly sought information about those incidents, including recordings captured by officers’ body-worn cameras and the VIPD’s body camera policy.
When pressed about the lack of responses to multiple requests for public records during a weekly press briefing Monday, Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. said a Government House attorney is drafting a statement explaining what information the government can legally release and that “if we have a camera — a police body camera policy — you’ll get it this afternoon.”
The Source had received neither by Wednesday night.
Fulgence questioned why two police officers were unable to restrain Torres.
“I could understand, if he had a weapon in his hand, then I could say you could have shoot him because you’re defending yourself,” she said. “But the two of you are struggling with Alex? That’s why Alex was asking for help, because he realized he couldn’t defend himself by his own, because it was two against one …. Something is wrong. Something went wrong with these guys, and I really need to have my answer as a mother, because this is bothering me. Every day, I have to wake up, thinking and seeing my son on the ground, dead. It’s not easy for a mother.”
St. Croix Source
Local news
