Officer struggles for answers a year after mom was killed in Stockyards police chase
Cris Meza stood alone inside a small room in John Peter Smith Hospital’s emergency room. He stared out a window, his eyes fixed on a heavily tattooed man handcuffed to a gurney.
Meza paced around the room, taking glances at his cellphone in hopes that news would come through about his mom. He was still wearing his River Oaks police uniform.
The afternoon had been a whirlwind of confusion that began hours before he found himself at JPS.
Earlier that day, he went into the River Oaks dispatch center during his shift. Meza glanced at a TV screen, which was playing a news station’s aerial footage of multi-vehicle crash in the Fort Worth Stockyards.
“Man that’s a hell of an accident,” he said.
Soon after, his supervisor called.
“Hey, your dad’s been in an accident,” he told Meza, adding that he should take his patrol car to Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital, where his father was being treated.
Meza left in a hurry, telling himself that he wouldn’t say anything to his mom or siblings until he saw his father’s condition. He didn’t want to worry them over nothing.
He found his dad, barely conscious, in a room awaiting surgery.
“Where’s your mom?” his father, Constantino, managed to ask.
“She’s not here,” Meza responded. “I wanted to see you before I told her.”
“No, she was with me,” Constantino said, adding that she was with him when they wrecked in the Stockyards.
Meza ran into hospital’s lobby, panicked.
“Is Gaudencia Meza here?” he asked.
No.
He ran back to his patrol car and rushed to John Peter Smith Hospital, where he knew high-level trauma patients go. When he arrived, the lobby was filled with Fort Worth police officers. His supervisors were there too.
Then he saw the man with tattoos handcuffed to a gurney.
Meza walked toward the man, but his supervisor grabbed him and took him to a small room. In that moment, he realized his parents were in the wreck he saw on TV.
“I’m going to find out where your mom is, don’t worry about it,” his supervisor told him.
Then his phone buzzed with a news alert.
“One woman dead, one man injured in Stockyards police chase.”
Meza punched a hole in the wall.
Anger boiling inside
An officer himself, Meza is battling the secrecy of another department to find information about his mother’s death. He worries he’s getting a watered-down version of events and has been denied access to in-depth details.
After Meza punched the wall, he tried to leave the room again. Before he could, his supervisor was on top of him. He pulled off Meza’s belt, getting his gun and Taser away from him.
And again, Meza was left alone to wait.
And then his brother called. He also just saw the news.
The screams Meza heard on the other end of the line haunt him more than a year later.
Eventually, Meza was led outside, and his supervisor took him back to Harris Hospital, where his father was recovering from surgery.
He wouldn’t know his wife had died until doctors felt he was strong enough to hear the news.
Meza began to make calls. First to his sisters, and then to Mexico, where the majority of his mother’s large family still lives.
He heard their screams over and over.
When he recalls that day, Meza speaks slowly. He chooses his words carefully and tries not to get upset. But it isn’t easy. He still feels the rage that he felt when he saw that man on the gurney.
Therapy hasn’t helped. Talking about the crash never gets easier. His family eventually stopped talking about it all together.
He knows exactly how long ago it was when his mother died on Sept. 6, 2018: More than 480 days ago.
Unanswered questions
Meza has learned nothing about what happened regarding the crash.
His records requests to the Fort Worth Police Department have been denied or heavily redacted. He was given a redacted copy of the department’s pursuit policy. He hasn’t seen the videos from their cruisers or their body cameras.
And although he often works alongside the Fort Worth Police Department, he doesn’t know which officers were involved in the wreck that killed his mom.
“Being on the other side, it’s not easy,” he said. “I just want to know what happened. I don’t want hearsay, I want facts.”
Luis Young III, the driver who caused the wreck, is in jail on charges of murder, theft, burglary, fraud and engaging in organized crime for his alleged involvement in a gang, according to court documents.
He’s scheduled to go to trial this month. Many of Meza’s questions might be answered then.
A heavily redacted report obtained by the Star-Telegram through an open records request shows that police already knew who Young was, and that he was a suspect in a burglary case.
Records say that Officer Benjamin Wright had been getting complaints for several days about a woman who had been burglarizing homes at Sabine Place Apartments, in the 1200 block of Terminal Road, just north of the Stockyards. Young was involved with the woman, according to the documents.
That day, Wright stopped Young just outside the complex for running a red light. Police later learned that Young was driving a stolen pickup truck. When Wright approached the vehicle, Young took off and headed south.
“I alerted dispatch that the vehicle was fleeing from the stop and gave the vehicle description and direction of travel as I was running back to my patrol car,” Wright wrote. “I then tried to follow but I was about 200 yards away from the vehicle.”
Young drove west on the wrong side of the road, and then onto the ramp used for northbound traffic going onto North Main Street, according to the documents.
Wright heard Sgt. Martin Chazarreta on his radio say that he was behind Young’s vehicle.
“I lost sight of both Sgt Chazarreta and the fleeing truck,” Wright wrote. “I warned units that the people in the vehicle may be involved in burglaries and that the driver may be someone named Luis.”
Soon after, Chazarreta got on the radio to say the truck had caused a wreck at North Main and Exchange streets.
The document does not give details on how fast the officers or suspect were traveling or what directions were given to the officers who were pursuing Young.
The department’s pursuit policy, obtained by the Star-Telegram, says officers must determine before they chase a vehicle if the pursuit will bring greater risk of harm to people than just letting the suspect go. It also says the decision to pursue should be based on population density, the geographical area and whether the offender’s identification is known.
The policy also says officers should not continue a pursuit without authorization from a supervisor. The policy does not say if officers should terminate a pursuit because of high speeds.
Witnesses told the Star-Telegram the day after the crash that officers were not in “hot pursuit” of the vehicle.
“They were probably at least a block behind” the driver who police said smashed a stolen Ford pickup truck into seven vehicles, said Ryan Sanders, 25, a valet at the Courtyard Marriott hotel.
Sanders said that Young was traveling at least “90 to 100 mph” and said he didn’t think police made the situation more dangerous.
“It was just he was going so damn fast,” he said.
Sgt. Chris Daniels said on Monday: “There was an internal investigation into this pursuit, as with all departmental pursuits. In this particular incident, the investigation revealed the officers acted within policy.”
Retirement was close
Hardworking barely describes Gaudencia Meza. She never stopped. Meza rarely saw his mom work less than two jobs.
Her favorite job was being a cafeteria employee at Washington Heights Elementary school in North Fort Worth. She did that for 20 years. She was supposed to be working the day the crash happened, but she was on leave for a minor injury.
“She was the greatest person that I’ve even known,” Meza said. “She’s one of the main reasons I’m here. She gave us good, strict discipline. She was a great wife, a great mother. She was the kindest person.”
Meza’s siblings were born in the U.S., but he and his mother were born in Zacatecas, Mexico — 844 miles southwest of Fort Worth.
When she brought her son into the United States, Gaudencia Meza never stopped working for her children.
“She worked a lot of stressful jobs that no one else wants,” he said. “Where she comes from, it wasn’t an easy life. She didn’t go to school because she had to work in the fields.”
Meza believes that’s partly why his mother loved her job at Washington Heights. She was around young people who were able to learn. In the meantime, she was strict on her children. They all did well in school and rarely stepped out of line.
“We all either went to college or have good careers and it’s because of my mom,” he said. “Where we come from, you got to work to eat and there is no such thing as being lazy. If you’re lazy you die.”
He and his brother own horses that they plan to one day race. It’s a little respite from the stress of mourning.
“Nothing has been the same,” he said.
This story was originally published January 8, 2020 at 5:55 AM.
