Shots Fired! Officer Down!

The spirt of Great-Grandpa Reyna remains with us today.

Grandchildren of Clemente Reyna. Estella, far left, her twin Chavela, Doroteo Jr, Zoila, Clemente, Ray, Carlos, Delfina.

On a cool Texas evening, February 6, 1893, Clemente Reyna, age 35, went to work.  He had been sworn in the month before as the Duval County Constable.  It was a beautiful day.  His wife Anselma was 7 months pregnant with a baby girl and it was his son’s Doroteo 3rd birthday.

That evening, as he left home for the last time, he would walk into a bar where a former Sheriff would kill him with a shotgun blast to the back of the head.  E.A. Glover was his name.  He was arrested at some point and held without bond at first.  He would eventually be tried in Webb County where he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to two years in jail.  

Doroteo Reyna at my parents wedding, 1957

Nine days after the killing, on February 15, the local newspaper in San Diego, Texas, described the story this way:  

The facts showed that AK Valls and Hayes Dix were quarreling in a salon in Benavides, this county, and Reyna, who was constable at that place, was trying to separate them and drew his pistol for that purpose and was shot and killed by Glover, who a few minutes before had gone home and come back with his shotgun.  The witnesses swore that Glover had said several hours before that he would kill a gr****** that night.  The evidence also showed that Reyna was shot in the back of the head while facing Valls and Dix.  Mr. Glover and able consul had surrendered himself and claims that he killed Reyna because he supposed Reyna was going to kill Dix.

Unable to make out word that seems to begin with gr…evidence suggests that the word is greaser.

That last line, that he supposed Reyna was going to kill Dix, was and remains pure mierda, as they say in those parts.

Let the record show that my great grandfather was ambushed from behind and killed in the line of duty.  This is why the State of Texas inducted him into the Texas Peace Officers Memorial on May 6, 2018, after his great grandchildren submitted his name and the circumstances of his death to the Texas Commission overseeing the memorial. 

Per rule 229.1, a person is eligible for this memorial if the fatal incident was a direct result of a line of duty; the fatal incident was an indirect result but directly attributed to a line of duty; the fatal incident was a direct result of a felonious assault on an officer, perpetrated because of the officer’s status, regardless of duty status.  

My great-grandfather was relatively young, inexperienced as a lawman, nervous, I imagine, with only one arm, figuring out how he was going to keep two men from fighting.  He pulled his service weapon for the purpose of separating the two, per the earliest account of the incident, and was killed from behind before he could carry out his duty to resolve the conflict peacefully.    

The case was appealed to the High Court in Austin, Texas, where it ruled in: Glover V. The State of Texas; 1894, that Glover was justified in killing officer Reyna because Reyna “drew his pistol evidently with the intent of killing Dix or Glover.”  The Court writes: “there is evidence which tends to show that deceased, when he had drawn his pistol, intended to shoot Glover, and was prevented by being shot by Glover, in protection of his own life.”   

You can see how the story is slightly but significantly different from the original account of February 15, 1893. Even if this story is credible, and it is not, why not suppose that Officer Reyna drew his service revolver for the obvious reasons of enforcing the law and preserving the peace. Instead the Texas high court says that he drew his pistol because he intended to kill people.  In order to prevent this, Glover shoots him in the head.

An officer of the law draws his service gun because he wants to kill people and is justified in being killed by a bystander.  This is what an 1894 “Supreme” Court of Texas would have us believe about my great-grandfather. 

The case was remanded to the lower Court where the case was dismissed by the district Court. Whether Glover served his time remains unknown.  Per the timeline known, he most likely served some time, even though all charges against him were eventually dismissed.      

As to the charge that Officer Reyna was intent on killing people unjustifiably, it is wrong. Clemente Reyna was a man of peace and so an officer of peace.

It was December 1944, somewhere on the western front, my father Carlos could make out a German soldier eating his lunch on a distant hill. He aimed his 50 MM browning submachine gun and sprayed a circle of bullets around him intentionally missing him. The soldier went in one direction and his sandwich in another, the memory of it being a source of great laughter for him even after all those years.

My Dad rarely spoke of his experience of heavy combat in the Ardennes during WW2. He was racked with anxiety during his life, the result of his time in war, but Dad was a man of peace. A friend of my father recounted the times before marriage when they would go to the bar with friends. If any sign of conflict emerged, my Dad would always seek to de-escalate any potential fight. 

Before I knew about my great-grandfather, I too was a peacemaker of sorts, breaking up fights among the younger kids whenever they broke out.  In the 1990s, when my niece Analisa was a teenager, we were at the mall when a high school kid approached me and said I once broke up a fight between him and a girl who was getting the better of him. He thanked me once again. 

So it came as no surprise when I learned that my great great-grandfather, Clemente, was killed in the line of duty breaking up a fight between two men in a bar.

In Deep in the Forest, an article in the Wall Street Journal dated November 4, 2009, wildlife experts in Germany knew that deer in the forest would not venture past strips of land where high electrical fences or other barriers once stood, even though they were removed years before the deer were even born.  One biologist noted, “in the past, the deer did not go to the Czech side because of the fence, and now that the fence is gone, they still stop at the border.”  They retain a collective memory, one biologist pointed out.

Clemente Reyna was an honorable officer of the law carrying out his duty as a peace officer when he was murdered.  His spirit of peace lives on in his family like the behavior of deer lives on in subsequent generations of deer. It was plainly manifested and part of my father’s life and part of my own as well.  It must have been who my grandfather Doroteo was as well. I imagine there are many other stories of peacemaking among the cousins and family.  It is in our collective memory, part of our DNA, passed on to us from one whose life was taken from us too soon.

I am sorry Grandpa Reyna that you lost your father to such a tragic event on the day of your 3rd birthday. Your father lived in peace and died in peace. His spirit and memory lives on in your children and their children and beyond. He died honorably carrying out his oath of office. It will not soon be forgotten.  

Rest in peace Pops.

Your Grandson, Cecilio 😊