A killing in Texas

and a chance for change

Earlier this week 18-year-old John Mendoza Jr. was shot and killed by a Brazoria County sheriff’s deputy. According to the Mendoza family attorney, John had just returned from his freshman year at Texas State and was exercising in a park near his home with three friends late Monday night. The boys noticed law enforcement observing them, and feeling uncomfortable, left the park in Mendoza’s car.

John Mendoza Jr. via Facebook

The sheriff’s deputy who had been watching them at the park followed their car and then attempted to initiate a traffic stop. It is unclear why. The boys, scared and confused by the actions of the deputy, chose to drive to Mendoza’s home where they hoped his father would help them resolve the issue with the deputy.

Mendoza pulled into his garage and the sheriff’s deputy pulled in behind him, at which point the deputy exited his car, walked up to the driver’s side door of Mendoza’s vehicle and shot him through the closed window. It took about ten minutes before paramedics arrived on the scene. Mendoza was transported to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Neighbors’ surveillance cameras capture the video of Mendoza driving down his street towards his home, with the deputy close behind. Because the range of the camera does not include Mendoza’s house, after the cars pass we are only able to hear the audio which demonstrates that after the deputy cuts his siren there is silence for 8 seconds before a single shot is fired. There is no audible warning or command given to Mendoza in those 8 seconds.

I should add that neither Mendoza nor his three friends were armed.

John’s father, John Mendoza Sr. has described his son’s killing as an execution. “In any other situation,” he said, “somebody would be arrested for this murder.”

The Brazoria County sheriff has referred the matter to the Texas Rangers for investigation.

Lake Jackson, the community in Brazoria County where Mendoza was killed, is about an hour south of Houston. Which means if you live within the Houston media market, there’s a good chance you heard about this tragedy. But for those of us outside of southeast Texas, this one might have passed our notice.

I found out about it after getting a call from Eugene Howard who lives in Brazoria County.

Eugene and I met five years ago when we marched with William Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign from Georgetown to Austin for greater voting rights. For four days along that slow, hot walk we talked about what brought us into the work, the opportunity we had to push the Biden administration and Senate Democrats to use their political power to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the possibility that we wouldn’t get the federal help we were pushing for (we didn’t) and what we’d have to do to make up for it.

We both decided that we’d do what we could with what we had, Eugene as President of the Brazoria County NAACP and me running Powered by People. We knew there were tough and long roads ahead of us, but we also knew we’d be traveling them in good company.

After Eugene told me about the tragedy of Mendoza’s killing on Monday night I asked him what we can do to help. He said we need to keep a spotlight on the investigation, make sure that there’s accountability and, ultimately, justice. But that’s not enough. We need change.

Eugene Howard via TheFacts.com

In 2024 Texas had the highest number of police-involved civilian deaths in the country and while the number dropped in 2025, it’s still higher than the national average. It may be a coincidence that Mendoza is Hispanic and all three of his friends with him in the car were Black, but nearly a week later we still don’t know why the deputy was observing them in the park, why he tried to initiate a traffic stop, and why he shot and killed this young man. We don’t even know who this deputy was. The Sheriff has yet to release his name. But we do know that Brazoria County has a long and often brutal history of injustice towards communities of color and that progress has come too slow for too many.

Eugene Howard is running for Brazoria County Judge. If he were to win, he could hold the Sheriff’s Department accountable through the power he and the Commissioners’ Court would have over its budget. As Judge, he could work with the County Sheriff to improve safety for everyone in the community and ensure that shootings like these are properly investigated and prevented from happening in the future. He could also determine whether our state government’s insistence on enforcing federal immigration law has created unsafe conditions that lead to over-policing of certain communities. His victory would also signal a powerful change sweeping through Texas.

But… Donald Trump won Brazoria County by 20 points in 2024 and Eugene’s a Democrat. So, nice thought, but not gonna happen.

Except for the fact that something is happening in Texas right now that we haven’t seen before.

You may remember a special election for a State Senate seat earlier this year in Tarrant County (home to Fort Worth), long described as the last reliably red urban county in America. The Democrat won that race by 17% in a district that Trump had won in 2024 by 14%. That’s a 31-point swing in just a little more than a year.

You’ve certainly seen the phenomenon known as James Talarico, electrifying voters across the state, in the usual places like Austin, Dallas and Houston and the unusual ones as well, like Brazoria. But you may not have heard that he’s joined by Democrats running for every single State House, every State Senate and every Congressional seat in Texas for the first time since 1974.

And then this – just last month Quentin Wiltz was elected mayor of Pearland, the largest city in Brazoria County. His victory made him the first Democrat elected in decades and the first Black mayor in Pearland’s history.

We have the power to change the things we cannot accept. I’m grateful Eugene Howard is out there, still walking the walk and on the ballot to bring change to Brazoria.

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Eugene Howard for County Judge