A 17-year-old boy shot by a San Antonio police officer while eating a McDonald’s hamburger in his car had four bullets removed from his body and suffered a pneumonia in the hospital, his family said Tuesday in their first public remarks since the shooting earlier this month.
“It’s very touch and go. It’s very hard,” Erik Cantu Sr. said, who added his son got had a tracheotomy and is struggling to breathe without assistance from machines. “He is getting slightly better, his wounds are healing, but the wounds that he’s endured, they are great, there’s a lot of them.”
Erik Cantu, 17, was shot by former San Antonio police officer James Brennand on Oct. 2 in a McDonald’s parking lot. Brennand was fired later that week and charged with two counts of aggravated assault by a public official. Police said Brennand violated his training and police procedures after approaching the car.
The teen had four bullets removed from his body in the hospital and one remains lodged near his heart for now, his mother said. The teen’s mother, Victoria Casarez, said Cantu was wounded in his stomach, diaphragm, lungs, liver and arm. His father said he had to be cut from the middle of his chest to his stomach at the hospital.
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“He’s just mutilated and it hurts us to see our son this way,” Victoria Casarez said.
Speaking at Tuesday’s…
