Welcome to Arrest Stories. A young man who survived a high-profile police shooting in San Antonio made headlines again after his seventh arrest in less than four years. Heres what may have happened.
On the evening of Monday, July thirteenth, twenty twenty-six, San Antonio police officers were dispatched on a wanted person call just before nine p.m. in the twelve thousand four hundred block of Interstate Ten West on the Northwest Side. Officers located Erik Cantu, twenty-one years old, at a Gold's Gym on Interstate Ten near Woodstone. When officers approached Cantu, he disobeyed commands and began fleeing on foot. Authorities quickly caught up with him and took him into custody without further incident.
Cantu was booked just before ten thirty a.m. Tuesday at the Bexar County Adult Detention Center on three charges: evading arrest with a previous conviction, a parole violation, and a reinstated burglary of habitation charge stemming from a December twenty twenty-five incident. A judge set his bond at twenty thousand dollars on the evading arrest charge. As of Tuesday afternoon, Cantu remained in custody.
The outstanding warrant that led to his arrest is connected to an incident reported on July first. According to an SAPD report, a twenty-year-old woman told officers she was riding in a vehicle with Cantu on the one thousand block of Locke Street when he allegedly made concerning comments that placed her in fear. She told police Cantu, who was driving, then stopped the vehicle and demanded she get out of the car. Cantu has not been criminally charged in connection with that July first incident.
The Tuesday arrest also reinstated a burglary of habitation charge, considered a second-degree felony. Just the month prior, on June eighth, a judge had sentenced Cantu to two years of deferred adjudication on that same burglary charge, placing him on two years of community supervision, ordering three hundred hours of community service, fourteen hundred and ninety dollars in fines and court costs, GPS monitoring, a driving prohibition through June twenty twenty-eight, and a no-contact order requiring him to remain at least one thousand feet from the victim.
Cantu first drew national attention in October twenty twenty-two when then-San Antonio Police Officer James Brennand shot him multiple times while he sat unarmed inside a vehicle in a McDonald's parking lot. Brennand was later charged, but those charges were dismissed. Separately, the Bexar County District Attorney's Office dismissed its case against Brennand on the same Monday as Cantu's arrest, citing further investigation. Prosecutors indicated they may refile charges at a later date.
All suspects presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Do not take this report as factual, always verify facts. Thanks for watching Arrest Stories.