The 17-year-old boy who was shot by a San Antonio police officer after he fled a McDonald’s parking lot was left “mutilated” and has been on a “roller-coaster” journey in his recovery, his parents said Tuesday.
“He’s just mutilated, and it hurts us to see our son that way,” Victoria Casarez, the mother of Erik Cantu, said at a news conference, NBC News reported.
The teen was eating a burger in his car earlier this month when then-officer James Brennand approached and shot at it as the jolted teen fled, authorities said.
Brennand was fired on Oct. 4, two days after the incident, and has been charged with two counts of aggravated assault by a public servant, a felony.
The boy’s father, also named Erik, on Tuesday said the teen has developed pneumonia and that his situation is “very touch and go.”
He said his son remains heavily medicated after undergoing a tracheotomy, in which a breathing tube was placed in his throat.
“Erik is not our Erik. As the doctors try to wean him off these things in the last few days, it doesn’t seem to counteract as the way we anticipated,” the father said.
“Therefore, those little steps we see daily, we just keep going back,” he added.
Casarez told reporters that all of the bullets have been removed except one that remains embedded near his heart.
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“They’re unable to get that out right now. It would do more harm than good,” she said, according to NBC News.
Brennand was in the parking lot originally responding to an unrelated disturbance when he spotted the teen’s car, which he believed evaded him a day earlier, police training commander Alyssa Campos said last Wednesday.
The rookie cop violated training and police procedures after he walked up to the car and ordered the teen out after he suddenly opened the driver’s side door before backup officers arrived, Campos said.
Erik and an unharmed passenger stopped nearby before police found them.
He was initially charged in connection to the incident, but the local district attorney’s office quickly dropped that case.
The family’s attorney, Benjamin Crump said the cop racially profiled the boy and “thought he had the right to just eviscerate the Constitution.”
Crump’s Partner, Paul Grinke, said they plan to look into the department’s policies and training.
“These incidents don’t start at the moment the trigger is pulled,” he said. “They start back in the hiring process, in the training process, in the retention process, and in the policies and procedures of each police department.”
