Roland Contreras Jr. was convicted of murder in the shooting death of Gabrielle Del Angel and then accepted a punishment deal.
BEXAR COUNTY, Texas — A Bexar County jury needed less than an hour to convict Roland Contreras Jr. in the 2023 killing of Gabrielle Del Angel, and by the end of the same day he had accepted a 50-year prison sentence.
The compressed courtroom finish stood in contrast to the long path that brought the case there. Prosecutors said the shooting happened April 6, 2023, when Del Angel was sitting in a Jeep outside a taco stand on Southwest Military Drive. Contreras, 35, was convicted of murder, and local coverage said the punishment agreement also addressed aggravated assault with a deadly weapon tied to the attempted shooting of Del Angel’s husband. He will be eligible for parole after 25 years.
The evidence described in local reporting centered on a short but violent sequence. Del Angel’s husband was waiting in line for food when Contreras approached while yelling and holding a gun. The husband ran back to the Jeep, where Del Angel was seated. As he tried to back out of the lot, he hit a parked car. Contreras kept after the vehicle and fired through the driver’s side window. The bullet struck Del Angel in the chest. Police said she was not believed to be the intended target. That detail shaped the case from the start, framing it as an attack aimed at one person that killed another.
The immediate aftermath added to the urgency investigators faced. After the shot, Del Angel’s husband drove to a nearby gas station at Southwest Military Drive and Commercial Avenue to seek help. Del Angel was pronounced dead there. Police later said the husband knew Contreras through an ex-girlfriend, a relationship detail that surfaced in coverage of the arrest affidavit. Even with that information, public accounts have not fully explained the motive behind the confrontation. They show who moved where and when, but not why the argument escalated to gunfire in a parking lot where other people had simply come to buy food.
The manhunt that followed became its own chapter in the case file. Officers tracked Contreras to a house in the 300 block of Humboldt, roughly 2 miles from the taco stand, where he was believed to be barricaded. The standoff lasted about 12 hours. When SWAT officers went inside, Contreras was gone. Police did not capture him that night. A covert unit later found and arrested him about a month after the killing. That gap between identification and arrest prolonged a case that, at its core, was built around a shooting lasting only moments.
When the case finally reached trial, the jury’s decision came rapidly. Local coverage put deliberations at about 30 minutes in one account and 41 minutes in another, but both reports described a swift verdict. Before the punishment phase continued, Contreras accepted a plea deal for a 50-year sentence. The speed of that ending suggested jurors found the prosecution’s narrative straightforward: a direct confrontation, a chase to the vehicle, a shot through the window and a death that prosecutors said was avoidable and immediate.
Del Angel’s life outside the case also remained part of the record. She was 33, a mother of three and a special education teacher in Southside Independent School District, according to local reporting and her obituary. Family members remembered her as “Gabby.” Those facts mattered because they located the case beyond the language of verdicts and parole eligibility. The woman killed that night was part of a household, a school community and a South Side network of relatives and coworkers whose connection to the story did not begin or end with the trial calendar.
With sentencing complete on March 27, the trial phase is over and Contreras is expected to serve his term in state custody. Future movement in the case would come through the appeals process or later parole review, not another round of fact-finding in open court.
Author note: Last updated April 18, 2026.