The victim, a 33-year-old teacher and mother of three, was shot in 2023 as she sat in a Jeep outside a South Side food truck.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — A Bexar County jury convicted Roland Contreras Jr. on Friday in the 2023 fatal shooting of 33-year-old Gabriele Campos Del Angel outside a South Side taco stand, and he later accepted a sentencing agreement that sent him to prison for 50 years.
The ruling closed a case that stretched nearly three years, from a late-night shooting on Southwest Military Drive to a brief jury deliberation in the 227th District Court. Prosecutors said Contreras fired at Del Angel’s husband as the couple tried to leave, killing Del Angel instead. The case also drew wide attention in San Antonio because police surrounded a South Side house for hours after the shooting, only to find the suspect had escaped before officers went inside.
Police and court records say the shooting happened about 9:30 p.m. on April 6, 2023, in the parking lot of a food truck in the 1800 block of Southwest Military Drive near Commercial Avenue. Del Angel and her husband had gone to get food when Contreras approached the man with a gun and started yelling, according to an arrest affidavit and later court coverage. The husband ran back to the Jeep, climbed in and tried to reverse away, but struck a parked car as he backed out. Authorities said Contreras kept chasing the vehicle and then fired. The bullet went through a side window and hit Del Angel in the chest. Her husband drove to a nearby gas station for help, but she was later pronounced dead. Police said she was not the intended target.
Investigators said the husband quickly identified Contreras because he knew him through an ex-girlfriend. That detail helped officers focus on Contreras within hours of the shooting. Police said he then fled to a home on the city’s South Side, where officers, SWAT personnel and negotiators tried to get him to surrender. San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said officers believed early in the standoff that Contreras was inside the house, and relatives at the scene told police he lived there. Officers used loudspeakers, set up a large perimeter and later sent tear gas into the home. But when police finally cleared the house after nearly 12 hours, Contreras was gone. Public reporting has not fully explained how he slipped away before officers entered, and authorities have not publicly laid out a fuller motive beyond the confrontation with Del Angel’s husband.
For Del Angel’s relatives, the case was never just about a docket number or a headline. Family members described her as a patient, humble woman known to them as Gabby, a mother raising three children and a special education teacher who cared deeply about her students. Her obituary said everything she did was for her children. Local reporting identified her as a Southside Independent School District teacher, and relatives said the children were all under 13 at the time of the killing. In the days after the shooting, family members told television reporters that she and her husband had stopped for tacos for the family and were trying to leave when gunfire broke out. They spoke of funeral plans, community donations and the sudden shock of explaining to three young children that their mother would not be coming home. One sister said Del Angel “was taken too early,” a line that came to sum up the family’s grief as the man accused in the shooting remained at large.
Contreras was arrested nearly a month later, after a covert police unit found him and took him into custody without further incident. He was booked on a murder warrant, and court coverage later showed he also faced an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charge tied to the attempt to shoot Del Angel’s husband, identified in sentencing coverage as Jesus Del Angel. His initial bond was reported as $200,000 on the murder case, with another $100,000 on the aggravated assault case. By August 2024, the murder bond had been converted to a personal recognizance bond because prosecutors had not yet indicted that charge within 90 days, according to testimony at a bond hearing. The aggravated assault bond remained in place. At that hearing, Senior Visiting Judge Lisa Jarrett denied a request to lower the remaining bond after prosecutors argued Contreras was also in violation of probation on earlier federal charges and could be transferred to federal custody if released. A trial date was still pending at that stage, and prosecutors said he could face life in prison if convicted.
When the case finally reached a jury on March 27, 2026, the guilt phase moved quickly. Local court coverage said jurors deliberated less than an hour before finding Contreras guilty of murder. Before the punishment phase went to the jury, Contreras accepted a sentencing agreement. Visiting Judge Melisa Skinner then imposed a 50-year prison term in the 227th District Court. Local reporting said he will be eligible for parole after serving 25 years. The prosecution team included Assistant Criminal District Attorneys Cynthia Olson and Rebecca Gorham, along with victim advocate Rebecca Garza and investigator Bruce Hallonquist. After sentencing, Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales said the outcome showed the office’s continuing effort to seek justice for victims and hold violent offenders accountable. The sentence resolved the trial court’s central question, but it did not erase the scene that first shaped the case: a food truck parking lot, a shattered vehicle window and a woman hit by a shot that police said was meant for someone else.
The public memory of the case has also been shaped by the moments around the crime and the search that followed. Television footage from the scene showed a hole in the Jeep’s driver-side window as investigators worked around police tape and patrol lights. Hours later, another set of police lights washed over the neighborhood around Humboldt as officers waited outside a house they believed contained the suspect. For Del Angel’s family, those long hours ended in fresh frustration when the house turned out to be empty. Her sister-in-law called the killing “a nightmare,” and relatives said three children were left to grieve a loss they had no part in. Their public comments were brief but pointed, aimed less at spectacle than at the simple fact that Del Angel had been sitting in a vehicle and was killed in a conflict that authorities said was not hers. That tension between the randomness of the shot and the long, deliberate path of the court case remained at the center of the story until the sentence was announced.
As of March 29, 2026, no new public hearing had been announced in the case. With the guilty verdict returned and the punishment agreement in place, the next steps are expected to move into the post-conviction phase, including any appeal and the long prison term now ordered by the court.
Author note: Last updated March 29, 2026.