Dallas Morning News
Originally Posted: March 16, 2015
Mayor Mike Rawlings became the first private donor to the Santos Rodriguez Memorial Scholarship at Southern Methodist University. This weekend, he pledged a personal check of $10,000 for the new SMU endowment fund. Applicants must seek a degree in the university’s human rights program.
“Symbolically, naming it for him was poetic,” Rawlings said in a phone interview.
Santos Rodriguez was 12 when he was pulled from his grandfather’s home on July 24, 1973, by a Dallas police officer and taken for an interrogation inside the police car. At issue: a soda pop machine theft of about $8.
Santos’ life ended when the officer fired a bullet into his left temple in what seemed like a horrific game of Russian roulette.
The Dallas police officer, Darrell Cain, was indicted and sentenced to five years.
According to the trial transcript, Cain admitted he was trying to scare Santos with his gun, saying “Tell the truth.”
Santos replied, “I am telling the truth.” READ MORE