- Police Brutality Watch

A Houston Independent School District police officer delayed several minutes before calling for an ambulance to help a dying 19-year-old he shot on the grounds of an elementary school last October, according to witnesses' accounts and public records obtained by the Houston Chronicle. A fire station was just five blocks away from Lantrip Elementary School, but help did not arrive until 1:47 a.m. — 29 minutes after a medical examiner's report says the officer first surprised Roy Rodriguez while allegedly trying to jimmy a vending machine with a screwdriver. Officer Richard McColister told investigators that he thought Rodriguez had a gun and he shot at him in self-defense. A school district spokesman initially said McColister had not delayed summoning medical help, but later said the officer didn't call right away because Rodriguez had fled and he wasn't even sure his shot had hit him. In a just-released autopsy report, the Harris County Medical Examiner's office said there was a trail of blood from the vending machine to the spot where Rodriguez fell, and soon died. A single bullet had entered on his left-rear side, then passed through his heart and out the front of his chest. Rodriguez also had fresh cuts and bruises on his face, the report says. A screwdriver was found near the vending machine, but no gun or other weapon was found at the scene. The Houston Chronicle requested response times and other details about Rodriguez's death after witnesses and family members complained that it took up to half an hour before an ambulance arrived from the nearby station on Telephone Road. The school district has offered conflicting timelines on the incident also . . ."There's a lot of discrepancies here — things don't add up," said Sylvia Gonzales, of the League of United Latin American Citizens in Houston. [more]