Leonel Chavez Jr. was doing tattoo work at a friend’s home when an argument ended in gunfire.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — A private tattoo visit at a South Side home became a murder case when Raymond Hernandez shot artist Leonel Chavez Jr. after an argument, prosecutors said.
The killing began in a setting built around trust, close contact and routine work. Chavez, 46, was at a friend’s house in the 800 block of West Baetz Boulevard in April 2021, doing tattoo work for someone there. Hernandez, who had gone to the home to get a tattoo, became involved in a dispute with Chavez. Five years later, a Bexar County judge sentenced Hernandez to 45 years in prison for first-degree murder.
Tattoo work often places an artist and client within inches of each other for long stretches, with equipment, ink and conversation filling a small room. Prosecutors did not describe the West Baetz Boulevard gathering as a business storefront. They described it as a friend’s home, where Chavez was working when Hernandez was present for tattoo work. The calm purpose of the visit collapsed when the two men argued. Authorities have not said in public summaries what the argument was about, how long it lasted or whether others tried to stop it before the gun appeared.
The shooting happened on April 2, 2021, in or near the home on the 800 block of West Baetz Boulevard, close to Commercial Avenue. Prosecutors said Hernandez pulled out a gun and fired at Chavez during the argument. A witness reported hearing the shot and seeing Chavez fall from his injuries. That witness also confronted Hernandez before reporting the shooting, according to the district attorney’s office. The account places other people close enough to see the immediate aftermath, adding to the fear and confusion that followed the gunfire inside a residential setting.
Hernandez then left the home on foot, authorities said. He did not discard the weapon at the scene, according to the public account. Surveillance footage later showed him less than a mile away while he was still holding the gun used in the killing. Local reports from the time said police found Hernandez several blocks away and took him into custody with a gun. Chavez died from his wounds, and the home where he had been working became the center of a homicide investigation.
The case moved from neighborhood emergency to courthouse file after Hernandez’s arrest. Prosecutors charged him in Chavez’s death, and he was later convicted of murder as a first-degree felony. Judge Jennifer Pena of the 290th Criminal District Court sentenced him to 45 years in prison. Texas law allows a prison term of five to 99 years or life for a first-degree felony. The punishment ordered in Hernandez’s case means he faces decades in state custody. Public statements did not list any additional sentence for a separate weapons offense.
Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales framed the result as a public safety and accountability decision. “Today’s conviction and sentencing uphold our commitment to holding offenders accountable and reassure our community that we will continue to work diligently to protect and serve,” Gonzales said. His statement came after the verdict and sentence, not during the first days of the investigation. By then, the case had moved through years of court process and arrived at the point where the punishment was fixed.
The South Side location gives the story a local weight beyond the courtroom. West Baetz Boulevard is a neighborhood street, and the nearby Commercial Avenue corridor connects homes, shops and daily traffic. A gunshot at a house there was not an isolated courtroom fact for the people nearby. It was a disturbance that sent witnesses and neighbors toward police and placed a private home in the middle of a murder inquiry. The public record does not say whether the home belonged to Chavez, Hernandez or another person, only that Chavez was at a friend’s house when he was killed.
The public details also leave some parts of the encounter unknown. Prosecutors have said Hernandez and Chavez argued, but they have not released the full cause of the dispute in the summaries available after sentencing. They have not said whether the tattoo work had begun on Hernandez, whether Chavez was tattooing Hernandez or another person at the exact moment of the shooting, or whether any payment dispute was involved. Those unknowns do not change the conviction but show the limits of the account made public after sentencing.
What is clear from the district attorney’s statement is the sequence prosecutors said they proved: Hernandez came to the home for tattoo work, argued with Chavez, pulled a gun, shot him, left with the weapon and was later seen nearby with it. That sequence made the case both intimate and stark. It was not described as a stranger shooting on a street corner. It was a fatal act inside a small social setting where people had gathered for a tattoo.
For Chavez, the public record preserves only a few details: his name, his age, his work as a tattoo artist and the place where he died. For Hernandez, the court record now includes a murder conviction and a 45-year prison sentence. The sentencing does not fill in every missing part of the argument, but it gives the case its legal ending unless an appeal changes the result.
The case now stands as a final judgment from the 290th Criminal District Court. Hernandez remains sentenced to prison, and any further movement would come through appeal filings, parole rules years from now or other court records. The home on West Baetz Boulevard is no longer just the scene of a tattoo visit gone wrong. In the court record, it is the place where Chavez was murdered.
Author note: Last updated June 21, 2026.