San Antonio News

A San Antonio police officer is hospitalized after a pickup truck hit him as he worked an accident scene on Interstate 410 on the northwest side of the city. Police reports show Officer Jonathan Esquivel was placing traffic cones to protect an officer working the accident scene when he was hit Sunday night.

According to the reports, the driver of the truck had taken his eyes off the rode briefly and hit the 28-year-old officer when he swerved to avoid hitting the stopped vehicles.

Bexar County sheriff’s deputies joined federal agents in a roundup of more than 200 high-powered guns, including AR-15s, AK-47s and a sniper rifle. The weapons were seized by agents from Homeland Security and the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives after straw purchasers living in San Antonio bought the weapons and delivered them to gun runners for a Mexican cartel.

Twenty-two people were arrested and pleaded guilty in federal court this week to firearms charges. The suspects were as young as 20 years old, and agents said many of them were women who had been recruited to go into gun stores and buy the weapons.

Exercise Bold Alligator 2012 has allowed sailors aboard the USS San Antonio an opportunity to once again work with Marines and Marine Corps equipment, something the ship’s crew has not handled in more than three years.

“The last time we had Marines aboard was when we deployed Oct. 2008,” said Cmdr. Neil Koprowski, commanding officer of the USS San Antonio, “but since then we had very limited amounts of Marines.”

Convicted murderer Rodrigo Hernandez was headed to the Texas death chamber after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block his execution Thursday evening for the abduction, rape and strangulation of a 38-year-old woman in San Antonio 18 years ago.

The high court rejected a last-day appeal about two hours before Hernandez, 38, was set for lethal injection for the slaying of Susan Verstegen, an employee of snack maker Frito-Lay. She was attacked at a storage area behind a supermarket and her body was found dumped in a garbage barrel behind a San Antonio church.

The slaying of a mother whose body was found stuffed in a garbage can behind a San Antonio church in 1994 remained a mystery for nearly a decade, when a prisoner in Michigan had to provide a DNA sample to be eligible for parole on an assault conviction.

That prisoner, Rodrigo Hernandez, was slated to die by injection Thursday for the abduction, rape and strangulation of 38-year-old Susan Verstegen. The execution would be the first of the year in Texas, which puts more prisoners to death than any other state and which is scheduled to kill at least six more inmates in the next several weeks.

Well that didn’t take long. After suiting up in just four games with the Austin Toros Cory Joseph is headed back to San Antonio.

The Spurs sent the 2011 first rounder down to the D-League last Tuesday to get some quality minutes running their affiliate ball club; however once news came down regarding the severity of backup point guard T.J. Ford’s hamstring injury suffered this past Tuesday in a game against the Milwaukee Bucks, the organization had no choice but to bring the rookie guard back.

According the Spurs’ official website, Ford is expected to be out four to six weeks.

Democrats and San Antonio DREAM Act advocate Benita Veliz have accused Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney of pandering to party extremists for his pledge to veto proposed legislation to provide citizenship for children of illegal immigrants.

Veliz, a Jefferson High School and St. Mary’s University graduate, was spared deportation in November.

A woman died after she fell down an elevator shaft at the Crockett Hotel Wednesday evening, San Antonio police said. Police received reports of the accident around 6 p.m. Investigators said she fell six stories down the elevator shaft.

Police said the woman was an employee at the historic hotel. Investigators are looking into the circumstances surrounding her death. Her name has not been released.

Oklahoma State is going to New York. Freshman guard Cezar Guerrero punched the Cowboys’ ticket.

Guerrero hit eight 3-pointers, second most in school history, and scored 29 points, tying a freshman school record, as OSU rallied from an 11-point deficit in the last 2:34 of regulation and beat Texas-San Antonio 90-85 in a Wednesday night thriller at Gallagher-Iba Arena.

The San Antonio Convention & Visitors Bureau’s Top Chef: Texas Sweepstakes page went live today. The CVB is giving away three prize packages — Culinaria, Fiesta and Top Chef: Texas — in conjunction with season 9 of Bravo’s “Top Chef: Texas.” The sweepstakes ends at midnight on Feb. 29, 2012. Winners will be notified by March 6. One entry per person.