Ladislado Uresti

Case summary

Incident

Around 10:30 p.m. on April 22, 1953, while he was working in a remote section of Concepcion Park as a watchman for Judd Plumbing Company in San Antonio, Texas, 47-year-old Mexican immigrant Ladislado Uresti was attacked by two men who beat him with iron chains. The two men fled in a car and Uresti made his way to a nearby building, where he told C.S. Smith, a white engineer on night shift, that he thought his attackers were from “the union,” though the records do not name a specific union. Uresti asked Smith to call the police and then the plumbing company. He told Smith he was quitting because he was afraid to work.

Police took Uresti to Robert B. Green Hospital. On April 24, Uresti was transferred to Santa Rosa Hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with a fractured skull, along with other injuries. He eventually lost consciousness and underwent surgery for a brain hemorrhage.

Uresti died at Santa Rosa Hospital on April 27. He was buried in San Fernando Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas on April 29.

Aftermath

Eddie Campa, a homicide detective with the San Antonio Police Department, investigated the case. In news reports after Uresti’s death, police said that Uresti was reportedly in a dispute with union plumbers the day before his assault, as the plumbers were upset about having to “work behind a non-union Negro ditch digger operator in the park.” Uresti was born in Mexico and had immigrated to the U.S. in 1913.

Witnesses told police that Uresti cashed a $200 paycheck on the day he was attacked, but the cash was not found on his person or recovered later. Investigators did find a bloody sock, shoe, watch, flashlight, and pocket knife at the scene, all belonging to Uresti, as well as a gray hat and a pack of cigarettes that did not belong to him. Campa’s investigation did not identify any suspects and did not lead to prosecution.

Following the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Cold Case Initiative and 2008 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, the DOJ initiated a review of Uresti’s death in January 2009. The DOJ determined the incident did “not constitute a prosecutable violation of federal criminal civil rights statutes” and closed the case on April 20, 2010.

Media Gallery

Case summaries are compiled using government records and archival primary source material. These include, but are not limited to, investigative records, arrest reports, newspaper articles, court filings, census records, birth and death certificates, transcripts, and press releases. In many cases, the records contain contradictory assertions.

In addition to the incident files associated with this case, this summary relied on the following:

Genealogical Records

• Population Schedule for Bexar County, Texas, United States, 1930, 1940
• Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio, Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Antonio, 1953
• Social Security Administration, Social Security Death Index, Master File, Texas, United States, 1953
• Texas Death Index, Texas, United States, 1946-1955
• World War II Draft Registration Cards, Texas, 1940

News Coverage

• “Autopsy Pends on Watchman,” San Antonio Express (San Antonio, TX), April 26, 1953
• “Park Attack Motive is Sought as Beaten S.A. Watchman Dies,” San Antonio Evening News (San Antonio, TX), April 27, 1953
• “Watchman Dies After Beating,” Brownsville Herald (Brownsville, TX), April 27, 1953.