SAN ANTONIO – A San Antonio police officer accused of beating up a 61-year-old man after causing a drunk driving crash last week shouted at a fellow officer at the scene and repeatedly banged his head on the window of a patrol vehicle, according to a newly released report from his arrest.
Dezi Rios, 39, faces misdemeanor charges of DWI and failure to provide information. He has still been not been charged with assault, however, 10 days after the incident played out at two North Side scenes.
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It is the third publicly known incident of road rage involving Rios since August 2017.
Rios was first accused of crashing into another driver’s vehicle that was stopped at a red light at the intersection of O’Connor and Stahl Roads, just before midnight on July 5.
After Rios briefly inspected the damage, the driver of the other vehicle said Rios got back into his vehicle and sped away, forcing the other driver to pursue him.
61-year-old man recounts being beaten by SAPD officer with history of road rage
“I said, ‘I’m just going to stop him, get his license plate number, at least the insurance.’ He shouldn’t run away,” driver Ara Halibian told the KSAT 12 Defenders last week, when asked why he followed Rios several miles.
After Rios’ vehicle hit the curb under an overpass at Bulverde Road and Loop 1604, Halibian walked up to the off-duty officer.
Halibian told the Defenders that he suffered a broken nose, significant trauma to his face and injuries to his shoulder, elbow and knee after being punched by Rios — according to Halibian’s count — between 20-25 times.
“He came and punched me right on my face,” said Halibian.
After Rios attacked him, he said the officer began to act as if he had been the one attacked.
“He’s a good actor. He’s a good actor,” said Halibian.
A DWI report released by SAPD officials this week states that Rios’ accounting of facts was very scattered. Rios claimed at the scene that Halibian had held him at gunpoint but that Rios had taken his gun away.
The report, however, states that Halibian was in possession of the weapon when officers arrived.
Halibian was returning home from his job as a licensed armed security guard at the time of the crash, he previously told the Defenders.
The DWI report states that after Rios performed poorly during a field sobriety test, he was placed under arrest for DWI.
After an officer began to read Rios his DWI statutory warnings, Rios began to shout at the officer, said he would not sign anything and told the officer several times “to get out of there,” the report states.
While an officer drove Rios downtown to be formally booked Rios “began banging his head multiple times on the window, saying he had a head injury,” according to the report.
The report also states that Rios removed his seat belt while en route to be booked.
Rios did not provide a sufficient breath specimen and would not answer whether he would voluntarily submit to a blood draw, forcing authorities to get a warrant to draw his blood, the report states.
Rios, who has worked for SAPD for 14 years, has been on extended military leave since July 29, 2019 and is now suspended without pay from the department pending the outcome of investigations into his conduct, SAPD officials previously said.
He is scheduled to be arraigned in County Court 4 on Aug. 5, court records show.
Rios was shot six times during a shootout outside All-Stars Gentlemen’s Club in May 2018, following a rolling altercation with another driver that started on Interstate 10 East and concluded after both men pulled into the Northwest Side parking lot.
The other driver, DeMontae Walker, was shot eight times during the exchange of gunfire, and was paralyzed from the waist down.
A woman riding in Walker’s car was grazed in the head by a bullet but was able to run from the chaotic scene and seek medical attention inside the club.
Walker, who spent more than three months in the hospital, was originally charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
However, a grand jury in Dec. 2018 declined to indict him.
Rios, who was hospitalized but recovered and later returned to full duty, was issued a 15-day suspension after the shooting and transferred out of his role as a training instructor at SAPD’s academy.
Rios avoided being criminally charged, however, despite being in possession of a firearm while under the influence of intoxicants.
After the shooting, he refused to sign a release form that would have allowed SAPD internal affairs investigators to ask for medical records verifying his level of intoxication the night of the shooting, records previously showed.
Nine months before the shootout, in August 2017, Rios was listed as the victim in another road rage incident, near downtown.
The other driver in that incident, Nathan Pezina, described Rios as “aggressive, very short-tempered, careless.”
Pezina, then 20 years old, was driving in the outside lane in his Dodge Avenger when Rios, in a rented Ford Expedition, attempted to merge into his lane, according to an SAPD incident report.
While Rios told investigators that Pezina sped up to block him from merging, Pezina told the Defenders Rios was the aggressor, repeatedly swerving his vehicle and nearly hitting the front bumper of Pezina’s vehicle.
“I could tell in a way he was mocking me or laughing about it. Kind of a smug sort of demeanor to him,” Pezina said.
Rios told investigators that Pezina, while driving, lifted up a firearm and pointed it at him, causing Rios to fear for his safety, call 911 and then follow Pezina until on-duty officers pulled Pezina over on the on ramp from Interstate 37 South to Interstate 10 West.
Pezina was charged with deadly conduct and unlawful carry of a weapon.
Bexar County court records show the unlawful carry of a weapon charge was dismissed and Pezina was given one year of probation after pleading no contest to deadly conduct in Nov. 2017.
Rios told officers who responded to the 2017 incident that he reached for his department-issued service pistol in his passenger seat, but then realized it was in the back area of the rented vehicle.
“He’s lucky he didn’t get smoked,” Rios was recorded saying on a fellow officer’s body worn camera, after being allowed to sit in the front seat of a patrol vehicle while officers conducted their investigation.
A second conversation between officers and Rios was not recorded with audio because the officer muted his microphone just before he began talking to Rios on camera.