1mo ago

Slurs, 911 calls and a crossbow: Records detail neighborhood disputes before Jonathan Joss' killing

www.nbcnews.com

Newlyweds Jonathan Joss and Tristan Kern de Gonzales held each other in their final moment together Sunday.

Joss, 59, the voice actor best known as John Redcorn on “King of the Hill,” had just been shot in the head in front of their San Antonio home.

"I didn't want him to struggle and everything, so I decided to tell him I loved him. And despite the severity of everything, he was able to look up at me and acknowledge what I was saying, so I know he heard me," said Kern de Gonzales, 32. "I just kept telling him: 'It's OK. You need to cross over. You don't need to keep struggling. You need to go ahead and cross over easy.'"

Kern de Gonzales said Joss' killer also had final words for the actor. He called him and his husband "jotos," a Spanish slur for gay people.

"I've been called that word while I was sitting on a bench with Jonathan, eating lunch," Kern de Gonzales said. "And I got called that holding Jonathan while he died."

Shortly after, police arrested one of the pair's neighbors, Sigfredo Alvarez Ceja, 56, in connection with Joss' killing.

57 comments

There was a house fire, so they were checking the mail sometime after it happened. Their dog had been missing since the fire. They discovered the skull of the dog on display, and were distraught. Neighbor came out and shot Joss in the head. Police said they don't suspect a hate crime.
America is fucked up.
- Shot him in the head and then called them a gay slur while he bled out in his husband's arms, but its not a hate crime.
  I hope america ends in ashes
  
  He had to call him a gay slur so his neighbours and the police knew he's cool
  
  American here. Me too. The whole system has been corrupt for decades
  
  I hope homophobes end in ashes. And your house. 🤷
  
  I hope america ends in ashes
  ☝️A guy condemning prejudice and hate against a group of people then proceeds to make a prejudicial and hateful comment against a group of people.
  E: I forget that this c/ is “fuck America and everyone in it”. If I point out hypocrisy or defend the idea that not everyone in the US is a shithead I get downvoted to hell.
So fucking sad. People shouldn’t have to suffer and die for just wanting to be with the one they love.
America you make me sick.
- We're making ourselves sick, too
- I think the takeaway is just don't live in Texas. For any reason.
  
  The thing is, even if you give up and say, ok things will never change, I'm leaving my home bc I've accepted I don't belong here, it spreads. The goal is to shape America into the reality they want. If you don't stop it, it's not contained to TX, or LA, or the south, or the fly-over states, or the suburbs/rural areas.
  Look at Roe v Wade. That didn't just happen overnight. State level policies spread from within and then eventually paralyzed a federal protection for the entire country.
  The only reason that even happened was bc the same people that wanted segregated schools also wanted to maintain federal tax exemption, so they saw Roe v. Wade as an opportunity to gain support for their movement. It had nothing to do with being morally opposed to abortion.
  The Real Origins of the Religious Right
  In 1971, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, passed a resolution encouraging “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”
  When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas—also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century—was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”
  6 years after Roe v. Wade, in 1979, the Heritage Foundation co-founder and political activist Paul Weyrich used abortion as a platform to deny Jimmy Carter a second term bc he knew it would be easier to get people on board regarding Roe v. Wade rather than getting people to support their movement protecting segregated schools.
  Weyrich's goal was to always gain power and ground for conservative values to dominate the entire country. He wrote about the need to dismantle the federal government decades before anyone heard of RAGE or DOGE.
  They use federal bureaucracy as a talking point now for the same reasons they seized Roe v. Wade back then. Bc it's a lot easier to get people on your side and convince them your goal is to get rid of unnecessary and "harmful" federal policy, rather than admitting your true goal is be allowed to steamroll federal protections with zero consequence.
  May 21, 2025: Justice Department ends police reform agreements and halts investigations into major departments
  In court filings Wednesday morning, the Justice Department asked judges in Minnesota and Kentucky to dismiss the consent decrees reached with the police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville.
  “After an extensive review by current Department of Justice and Civil Rights Division leadership, the United States no longer believes that the proposed consent decree would be in the public interest,” the DOJ said of the Minneapolis agreement.
  The Civil Rights Division is also closing investigations into local police departments in Phoenix; Trenton, New Jersey; Memphis, Tennessee; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and the Louisiana State Police.
  Jim Pasco, the longtime Executive Director of the Fraternal Order of Police, said that consent decrees are ineffective and “do not make any material positive difference in the relationship between police departments and the cities they serve.”
  “In fact, to the contrary, it exacerbates the problem because it validates thinking in urban areas that the police are their enemy,” he said.
  So the entire U.S. believes that? Across all those cities and states? Or does a select group of people seem to be speaking for the entire U.S. and making some very concerning policy decisions regarding federal protections?
  
  Low cost of living states trap you.
  I would LOVE to leave Oklahoma. But a lot of the same reasons I want to leave are the reasons I’m trapped here (legal discrimination against trans people, absolutely no form of support for domestic violence survivors, and crippling PTSD from growing up in a state that doesn’t view me as human.)
Police records obtained by NBC News and interviews with Kern de Gonzales and the pair’s neighbors paint a complicated picture of what led up to Joss' death.
So it's a fact he went on to Joss' property to confront him, and then ended up shooting him in the head...? On his own property? And then calling him a slur after he shot him?
Regardless of history, if it happened on Joss' property, it really doesn't seem complicated. It seems like a pretty deliberate decision, and if he put the dog skull on their property it actually kinda seems pre-meditated. Like he was hoping for a confrontation.
I've had some awful neighbors in the past, and it sucks. Sometimes you just can't get along with people. Even the worst of the worst neighbors I've had, I can't imagine ever going on to someone else's property to confront them, killing them, and then expecting anyone to believe I might have been in the right.
It's one thing to defend your own home, but it's not your job to confront your neighbor on private property with a lethal weapon, just bc they had previously been walking around the neighborhood with a pitchfork. Wtf?
- Regarding whose property it was, it's likely debatable. From Kern de Gonzalez's post, it seems like they were living in a trailer park. Sometimes all the property outside the trailer itself technically belongs to the park management and is treated like a shared public area. There's all sorts of weird little jurisdictional technicalities that happen in trailer parks from what I've been told.
  
  I thought the trailer park is where they live currently because the house burned down. I think in Tristan's post it was mentioned the the house was left to Joss by a grandparent.
You know what else is fucked up?
There are an average of 53 firearm homicides every day in the USA. The only reason this one makes the news is that someone mildly famous is involved. Probably dozens of other shootings on that same day for some fucked up hate reason as well, but we wont ever hear about them
- The other day someone on Lemmy introduced me to the concept of a 'bed pistol' as a gun you take to bed with you.
  The existence of such a concept is so bizarre and distopian.
at first I read Jonathan as "Johnson" and for a split moment in time I was filled with hope that it would be "Mike Johnson" but nope. Now I feel like the guy in that old Russian joke about checking the newspaper headline every day for an obituary.
Huh. So the victim isn't a model neighbor, sounds kind of like an asshole. Was using a propane grill inside the house that he swears he turned off before the fire that killed his dogs. Had a pitchfork and was ranting and raving?
This isn't a slam dunk of a hate crime. Still not convinced he should be shot, I guess that's what trials are for.
e: I know Lemmy wants blood for this, but if these facts are true then it's not black and white. Y'all go off, this is still one side that's given statements. Gay dudes can be great and gay dudes can be horrible.
e2: any other poor people here that just don't use a propane grill inside the house when your heat doesn't work? That's not rational behavior.
- Yeah, I agree. This article paints a bit of a different picture than the initial ones. Idgaf what dispute two of my neighbors are having with each other, if one of them is drumming and loudly singing late at night I'm calling in a noise complaint, god damn.
  I'll tell you what I'm not doing though:
  Arson
  Psychological torment leaving a pet skull in a burned home
  Murder
  Whoever killed Joss is fucked up, even if 1 and 2 aren't actually true (barbecue inside...?????). Regardless of how much of an ass Joss might have been as a neighbor.
  
  Yeah, I'll go ahead and go on record saying the shooter is a bigot piece of trash, but this seems more nuanced than, "Shoot that queer!"
- Yeah, reading the article paints a more complex story than I had been reading on here since his death. The police had come out to their house "four dozen times" before, barbequing in the living room on the day of the house fire, allegedly showing up at his neighbor's house with a crossbow before the police removed it from the home.
  It's a tragic situation, regardless of whatever details ultimately come out, but I think it's probably best to let the investigation and courts sort out this mess.
  
  Tragic when anyone is shot on the street.
  Even in San Antonio I can't see a cross burning, "get out queers!" campaign from the neighbors.
  Inconclusive fire investigation means it wasn't arson, barring a coverup. If it's arson, those fire investigators fucking find it.
- Some people see hate crimes and immediately blame the dead.
  
  There was a long ongoing dispute between the neighbors where apparently the victim called the neighbor racial slurs multiple times. So basically a homophobic shooting a racist? I dont know what to make of this article.
  
  No dude, I'm on the victims side, but the narrative that this is Klan activity is probably wrong.
- I guess the real question is about what the intent of the hate crime law in texas. Is it intended to punish people who's only motive was hate of a protected class? Is it to enhance punishment of people where the hate is a partial motive? Could also just be to enhance punishment of people who hate protected classes even if that wasn't part of the motive.
  In the end it is probably easier to prosecute without it. And the guy is old enough he won't get out anyway.
- Don't know why you're getting downvoted.
  People, read the article.
  
  Because you are either seriously fucked up, or American, if you think any of the shit that Joss was claimed to have done warranted him getting murdered in cold blood over a neighbour's dispute.
  
  Online left is out for blood on this one.

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