GARCIAS TO TRUJILLO AND CITY POLICE: WHERE'S OUR BEEF?

By Juan Montoya

Call it the case of the missing case of the missing cow.

On the Thursday before July 4, a cow belonging to Isiah Garcia,a lifelong rancher on Garcia Lane on Morningside Park wandered off from her corral as other livestock had done in other times. In fact, neighbors often called the Garcias to tell them their cows or horses were loose.

In cases where they could not locate him, the Brownsville Police Dept. had called the Sheriff's Dept who in turn called Sonny Ramos, the "County Cowboy" who picks up errant livestock and holds them until the owner inquires of their animals. This time, the "cowboy" said he didn't have his cow,

This time it didn't work out that way.

Brownsville Police officer Roland Trujillo showed up at the scene after neighboring ranchers reported the wandering animal. But instead of calling the sheriff's department, Trujillo said he called David Garcia – a retired BPD officer who owns a ranch with livestock off Alton Gloor Road.

That's what Trujillo said the first time. As Garcia kept looking for his cow, Trujillo's story kept on changing. First he said he had given it to retired cop David Garcia. Then he said he had allowed a man who was driving by in a gray truck with a trailer take the cow, not necessarily Garcia.

When Isiah Garcia inquired with the BPD and asked to speak to with an investigator, the policeman at the desk – who had been with Trujillo when he answered the loose livestock report – called Trujillo instead. Trujillo denied he had given away the cow, and they got into words. So he left.

And when he went the next day to ask for a police report on his missing cow, he was told that they could not give him one. They asked me if I wanted to talk to Trujillo and I asked them why I would want to talk to him? 

"When I talked to him the first time he told me that he had spoken with me and that he had seen me put the cow back into the corral," Garcia said. "That was a lie and I told him he had never spoken with me before. If I had put back the cow  in the corral, why would I want to talk to him?"

"When I went to talk to get a police report, they told me they couldn't give me on right now and asked me if I wanted to talk toTrujillo," he said. "Then I went to talk to David Garcia after I had gone to the PD. He let me look into his corral and the cow wasn't there. Did someone call him to tell him I was coming?"

Stymied, he went to make a report with the Cameron County Sheriff's Department and was told to get a report from the BPD.

Now, he wonders where he can go to get back his cow. In the past, when a horse valued at between $5,000 to $10,000 each, the police would call the sheriff, turn over the livestock to the "county cowboy," and then pay an impoundment fee of $40 per day. 

In this case, the cow never made it to the county impound and Trujillo's incident report has never surfaced.

"The cow was really tame and friendly," Garcia said.
"It always made its way back when it wandered off. She was so tame that my son named her "La Vaca Lola,'" he said. "I paid $1,100 for her, but now she is worth worth about $2,000 because Lola was pregnant."

(In the photo, Garcia leads Lola around the Garcia spread.)  

Garcia, 24, who said he has been a rancher all his life and started riding horses when he was four, says he won't let the case die even if the BPD, the sheriff's department, or local prosecutors won't do anything.

"This is corruption at its worse," Garcia said. "Maybe it will take the Texas Rangers to look into this."

(After this post, a source emailed us to say that the USDA tick inspectors had seen a cow resembling the missing bovine and were on the case.)

If anyone has information concerning the missing cow, call Lt. Domingo Diaz Jr. at (956) 427-8060 orSonny Ramos (Livestock Officer) at (956) 434-8188 at the Cameron County Sheriff's Dept.