SAN ANTONIO – In the last three months, three tourists have died in downtown San Antonio due to crime. Now, some visiting the city have shared a concern for their safety.
“Oh, we’ve been visiting for probably like about 20 years now,” Gary Rumbaugh said.
Rumbaugh has taken his family throughout the city for vacations, holidays, and back-to-school shopping.
However, he has recently grown weary of the downtown area.
“You don’t know if it’s safe or not. Now, lately, you don’t know,” he said.
Three crimes, three deaths, three months
In late May, an 80-year-old woman from Euless, a suburb in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, in town for a graduation died after a stray bullet in a downtown shooting struck her.
Earlier this month, a 42-year-old man died from his injuries after being assaulted by an 18-year-old man on a downtown sidewalk.
This week, a woman who taught in Jasper ISD in town for a high school coaching conference was killed after being shot in the back while at a rooftop bar near downtown. A preliminary report from police said “a gunshot was heard from the vicinity of Interstate 37, which then hit the victim.”
‘So goes downtown, so goes the rest of the city’
While the three cases are not connected, there has been one arrest between them. All three of the victims were tourists.
“That isolated incident is now happening more frequently,” said Trish DeBerry, CEO of Centro SA, a placement organization working to help invigorate the downtown area.
DeBerry said crime downtown has fallen throughout the years; however, she is becoming concerned with the recent incidents involving tourists.
“I do think that downtown is very safe, but we know how to navigate it, right? But for a visitor who comes into town, who may not know where there might be hotspots and look a bit vulnerable, that becomes an issue,” she said.
DeBerry believes that adding more lights and security cameras downtown and increasing police presence could help deter criminals. She also described how Centro SA plans to add security ambassadors in addition to those already downtown.
DeBerry described the importance of a safe downtown when asked if doing nothing would worsen the problem.
“Well, I’ve always said, ‘So goes downtown, so goes the rest of the city,’ because downtown is the heart and soul of San Antonio,” she said. “So we have to be laser-focused on keeping downtown safe, especially when we have a very high rate of tourism activity that’s down here.”
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