Authorities said Bowman was stabbed at a Northeast Side bus stop and died after trying to get help nearby.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — More than a year after Michael Bowman was stabbed at a Northeast Side bus stop, the man convicted of killing him, Carl Mott, was sentenced to 70 years in prison in Bexar County court.
For the criminal case, the sentence answers the central question of punishment. For the public record, it fixes Bowman’s death within a timeline that begins with a brief confrontation on Dec. 14, 2024, and ends with a March 6, 2026 judgment. Prosecutors said Bowman, 52, was attacked while standing with his wife, then made it to a nearby restaurant before dying from the wound. The jury convicted Mott on Jan. 30 of murder and tampering with evidence.
Bowman’s final moments shaped the case from the start. Prosecutors said he and his wife, Crystal Bowman, encountered Mott at a bus stop on the northeast side of San Antonio. The state said Mott had been engaged in a long-standing affair with Crystal Bowman. After words were exchanged, prosecutors said, Mott stabbed Michael Bowman in the upper left shoulder. Even after the wound, Bowman and his wife were able to reach a nearby restaurant to seek help. That detail placed the human cost of the attack at the center of the story from the first reports: a man injured in public, trying to get inside and survive. He later died from his injuries, and the case moved from an emergency response to a homicide investigation.
Investigators said the Bowmans identified Mott as the attacker in the immediate aftermath. Local reporting at the time also said the couple told officers Mott had assaulted Bowman before. That earlier allegation suggested the December 2024 encounter did not come out of nowhere, though prosecutors focused the public sentencing announcement on the fatal stabbing itself and the evidence recovered afterward. Michael Bowman’s death became the fixed point around which all other details turned: the relationship between the adults involved, the seconds during which the knife was used and the hours after the attack when police worked backward and forward to account for the suspect’s movements.
Authorities said surveillance footage showed Mott discarding the knife in bushes near his workplace about 10 minutes after the stabbing. He was arrested about 11 hours later, prosecutors said, and police recovered the knife four days after the attack. That sequence gave the prosecution an evidentiary path that reached beyond the bus stop. It also supported the tampering charge, which jurors considered alongside the murder count. In court, the state’s theory joined motive and conduct into one line: a confrontation involving the husband of the woman prosecutors said Mott had been seeing, followed by a fatal stabbing and a quick attempt to get rid of the weapon. The jury accepted that theory when it returned guilty verdicts on Jan. 30.
Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales said after sentencing that the violence was “fueled by jealousy” and had cost Bowman his life. Judge Ron Rangel, presiding in the 379th Criminal District Court, imposed the 70-year sentence on March 6. The ruling did not restore what Bowman’s family lost, but it marked the legal system’s clearest response to his death. The case also left behind a familiar and unsettling picture: a deadly personal dispute unfolding in a routine public place, near ordinary businesses, with strangers nearby and a victim forced to seek emergency help on foot.
As of now, the record shows a conviction, a sentence and a case that centers on Michael Bowman’s killing at a bus stop on Dec. 14, 2024. The next step would come only if the defense pursues appeal or other post-trial action.
Author note: Last updated April 2, 2026.