Four Brownsville teens have been arrested by police after a 70-year-old man reported being shot with a soft-pellet gun.
Bryan Salinas, 17; Anthony Gianni Vicencio, 18; Gabriel Sebastian Cisneros, 17; and a 16-year-old boy are each charged with one count of criminal mischief and one count of injury to a child/elderly/disabled person, said Investigator Martin Sandoval, spokesman for the Brownsville Police Department.
Under the Texas penal code, anyone 17 years or older who commits a crime is considered an adult.
Police were called at around 4 a.m. Thursday to the downtown area at the 1100 block of East Levee Street in reference to property damage, Sandoval said. A business owner told police four males in a black Mercedes Benz had thrown eggs at the door of his business, Sandoval said. He also said that one of them pulled out a gun and started to shoot at the front window.
The gun was identified as an air-soft gun, which shoots plastic pellets, Sandoval said.
A lookout was placed on the Mercedes Benz, and at about 4:40 a.m., officers responded to the 2636 Boca Chica in reference to a disturbance. A 70-year-old man told police he was out for his morning walk when a black Mercedes Benz pulled up next to him. Four males were in the vehicle, and one of them asked him for directions, the man told police.
“They asked the man for the directions, and the next thing you know they pulled a gun and started shooting at him,” Sandoval said.
The man realized he was being struck by plastic pellets, and he ran to a nearby convenience store to call police.
As the man was giving his statement to a police officer, he saw the Mercedes Benz and pointed the vehicle out to the officer. “He said, ‘hey, that’s the vehicle’,” Sandoval told The Herald, “and that is when the officer took jumped in the unit and took off after them. There was another officer in the area, and he pulled the vehicle over.
“And they actually did find the air soft gun in the vehicle,” the investigator said.
Bonds on Salinas, Vicencio and Cisneros were set at $3,500 each. The juvenile was transported to the Darrell Hester Juvenile Detention Center in San Benito.
