March and memorial mark 50th anniversary of boy murdered by Dallas Police officer

Monday marks 50 years since the murder of Santos Rodriguez inside a Dallas Police patrol car.

The 12-year-old’s killing sparked protests and outrage but it wasn’t until last year that a statue honoring Santos Rodriguez’s life was unveiled.

On Sunday, the city of Dallas hosted a commemorative march and memorial to help keep Santos’s story, his legacy, alive.

In any march, the where only makes sense when you know the why.

For the Santos Vive Coalition, it means marching through present-day Uptown stopping traffic along busy high-rise lined corridors. Many of the occupants in those vehicles likely do not know the history that surrounds them; that those marching were reconnecting with what was once the heart of Dallas’ Little Mexico neighborhood and where Santos Rodriguez lived.

Hadi Jawad is a writer and Dallas activist who, along with many others, works to make ensure Santos’ story is known to all.

“This is a story that Dallas cannot forget,” Jawad said. “This story tells us who we are and where we have been.”

Santos Rodriguez was a 12-year-old boy in the summer of 1973 when in the early morning hours of July 24, he was taken from his home by two Dallas Police officers and placed in handcuffs.  His brother David, then 13, was there too and both were placed inside a patrol car.

A Dallas police officer, when questioning the boys about an 8-dollar theft from a nearby gas station vending machine, decided to play Russian roulette.  The officer pointed a gun at the child’s head, pulled the trigger and killed Santos.

The officer, Darrell Cain, was convicted of his death but was given the lowest possible sentence of 5 years and was released after serving less than three years in prison.  Cain, who died in 2019, never apologized to Rodriguez’s family.

Eddie Garcia, the first Latino police chief in Dallas, worked to rectify that during a ceremony marking the 48^th anniversary of Santos’ death in 2021, apologizing to Santos’ mother on behalf of the department.

Brenda Martinez-Del Rio with the city of Dallas says remembering Santos’s story in Pike Park amid all that’s changed around it in the last half century, will only continue if people know the story.

“This is when we first started civically protesting and getting together and working as a community,” Martinez-Del Rio said. “We want the youth to start being civically involved.”

A memorial Sunday night included a blessing at a statue for Santos, a blessing Santos’ brother David, now in his 60’s, did not attend. Daphne Rodriguez said the trauma surrounding the anniversaries of Santos’ murder still keeps her husband away from large gatherings.

“But he is appreciative that everyone is still thinking about Santos, trying to keep his memory alive,” Rodriguez said.