SAN ANTONIO – Residents in the Bent Tree neighborhood in Kendall County said they always thought the gates around their quiet subdivision would keep trouble out.
Instead, they woke up to gunfire around 5 a.m. Wednesday, when at least one Kendall County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed a man who they said was armed with a gun.
“It woke me up out of a dead sleep,” said Sheila Ponce. “I heard ‘dut, dut, dut, dut, dut,’ and I come from a background where I figured that was rifle shots.”
Ponce said when she looked outside her front door, she saw first responders gathered nearby and a man, later identified by the Kendall County Sheriff’s Office as Austin Hodo, on the ground who appeared to be dead.
According to a post on KCSO’s Facebook page, deputies were called to the neighborhood off Sisterdale Road, not far from Interstate 10, for a report of a man dressed only in underwear and firing a gun.
Deputies said at some point, the man also fired shots at a neighbor.
A sheriff’s spokesman later confirmed the shooting was fatal and four sheriff’s deputies responded to the scene.
The Facebook post noted that no one else was hurt during the shooting.
The shooting has also left people in the area with many unanswered questions, such as how trouble found its way into their neighborhood.
“Did he come in from Sisterdale (Road) and walk through all that with no shoes on? I don’t know,” she said.
The dashcam video
According to dashcam video from a KCSO patrol vehicle obtained and viewed by KSAT on Wednesday night, the deputies asked Hodo to drop his weapon at least 25 times, but he did not comply.
The 46-second video begins with Hodo’s back turned toward the deputies. The weapon is seen in Hodo’s left hand. An unidentified cloth is in his right hand.
At the 23-second mark of the video, Hodo turned around and began facing the deputies, who continued to ask him to drop the weapon.
“He’s got a gun in his left hand,” one KCSO deputy was heard saying in the video.
At the 37-second mark of the dashcam video, Hodo began sauntering towards the deputies. As he got closer to law enforcement, the video showed the deputies’ commands to Hodo to drop the gun became louder.
At the 45-second mark, Hodo was seen raising and pointing the weapon at the deputies. Gunfire is heard in the video, which showed Hodo being shot at least once.
Watch the dashcam video below:
Administrative protocol
Per KCSO policy, the four responding Kendall County Sheriff’s deputies have been placed on administrative leave, pending the results of an internal investigation.
KCSO’s investigation into the shooting remains active.
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