Cynthia Ruiz knew pain and hardship all too well. As a widow, she had already lost the love of her life, but she knew she had to be strong for the sake of her son. Andrew Herrera was just 19 years old when he lost his life in a senseless act of violence.
Late one night, Cynthia received a call from the San Antonio Police Department that shattered her world. The cops informed her that her son had been shot and killed while allegedly trying to rob a Popeyes Chicken restaurant. She was heartbroken and devastated.
“Did my son deserve to be punished? Yes, he did,” Cynthia said. “Did he deserve to die? No.”
According to the police, Andrew had entered the restaurant wearing a hoodie and a mask, supposedly armed with a gun. He confronted a man and his family who were eating at the establishment, demanding money. The man told him he had already spent all his money at the restaurant to feed his family. Andrew then noticed a Popeyes employee dashing for safety and panicked, pivoting and holding the gun on the fleeing employee. This proved to be a fatal mistake.
The man removed his concealed weapon and fired it at Andrew until he was disarmed and apparently dead. Since the man had a license to carry a concealed weapon, he was trained to use it in situations like this.
“Here in Texas, if you’re in fear of loss of life, loss of property, you have a right to defend yourself,” a police spokesperson said.
The tragedy was too much for Cynthia to bear. Losing her husband was hard enough, and she had struggled to keep her son on the right path, but she never thought he would end up dead in a chicken joint. She questioned why the man had to shoot her son four more times, and why he couldn’t have just disabled him and let the police handle it.
Cynthia is desperate for answers and wants to see the surveillance footage from the restaurant to determine the truth. She needs to know if the man with the gun was telling the truth or if he had taken pleasure in shooting her son five times in the back. But the police have not been forthcoming with information and have not even confirmed if surveillance footage of the incident exists.
Andrew’s mental health had been an ongoing concern for Cynthia. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a child and schizophrenia in 2016, which made life challenging for him. He had stopped taking his medication three weeks before he was murdered and had expressed his frustration to his mother.
“What is life? Being on medicine all the time and I’m sleeping? I’m missing life,” Andrew had told his mother.
Cynthia knew her son had problems, but she never thought it would come to this. She lost her husband and now her son, and she is left with nothing but questions and a heart full of pain.
WATCH the video below:
Source: AWM
