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Nicholas Norris

Age : 38

Gender : Male

Race : White

Date : 09/30/2021

Location : Potranco Road and Sundance Crest

City : Far West Side

County : Bexar

State : Texas

Agency : Bexar County Sheriff's Office

Officer(s) :Deputy Joseph Trevino

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during pursuit

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 09/30/2021, Bexar County Sheriff’s Deputy Joseph Trevino shot and killed 38-year-old Nicholas Norris near Potranco Road and Sundance Crest in far west Bexar County after deputies encountered Norris during what his family described as a mental-health crisis.
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The encounter began shortly before 8 a.m. when a deputy stopped at a convenience store near Potranco Road and Arcadia Path and a store clerk reported that Norris had been frightening customers. Sheriff Javier Salazar initially said the deputy approached Norris, who drove away in a Nissan Xterra. Deputies initially decided not to pursue him. According to later reporting, deputies subsequently saw Norris driving erratically and in circles near Potranco Road and Sundance Crest during morning rush hour and reengaged him.
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A custodial-death report subsequently filed with the Texas Attorney General provided a somewhat different description of the reason deputies were trying to detain Norris. That report said deputies were attempting to issue Norris a criminal-trespass warning. This is a significant distinction from the sheriff’s initial public description, which emphasized reports that Norris was frightening customers.
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According to Salazar’s initial account, deputies caught up with Norris and attempted to take him into custody. Salazar alleged that Norris struggled with deputies and that at some point Trevino was dragged by Norris’ vehicle. Salazar said investigators had obtained witness video showing the deputy being dragged. Trevino fired one shot into the vehicle, striking Norris in the upper body. Norris was eventually removed from the vehicle and transported for medical treatment but died en route to the hospital.
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However, the custodial-death report submitted afterward to the Texas Attorney General did not mention Trevino being dragged by Norris’ vehicle — one of the central facts Salazar had publicly cited when explaining the fatal shooting. The report also did not contain several other details from the sheriff’s original description. The discrepancy was substantial enough to prompt later news coverage questioning whether the official written account supported portions of Salazar’s initial narrative.
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Norris’ family strongly challenged the framing of the encounter. His father, Thomas Norris, said his son “did not deserve to die,” while attorneys for the family said Norris was experiencing an emotional and mental-health crisis following the death of his mother from COVID-19 and needed medical intervention rather than deadly force. Attorney Nicolette Ward said the family’s legal team was investigating all available legal options and demanded complete transparency from Bexar County regarding the shooting. Publicly available reporting located through 2026 documents the threatened legal action but does not establish that the family ultimately filed a civil lawsuit.
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The circumstances were particularly notable because Bexar County authorities already knew Norris had serious mental-health needs. Salazar acknowledged that the county’s Specialized Multidisciplinary Alternate Response Team, or SMART, had previously encountered Norris and transported him for mental-health treatment, and San Antonio police had also previously taken him for treatment. Salazar publicly questioned why Norris was again outside a treatment setting, effectively acknowledging that law enforcement and the behavioral-health system were already familiar with his condition before the fatal encounter.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND
Joseph Trevino was publicly identified by BCSO nearly two weeks after the shooting as the deputy who fired the fatal shot. The later custodial-death report is important to evaluating Trevino’s shooting because it omitted the allegation that Trevino had been dragged by Norris’ SUV, despite Salazar having repeatedly presented that alleged dragging as an important part of the circumstances surrounding Trevino’s use of deadly force.
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The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office itself had significant use-of-force and accountability issues surrounding this period. In 2017, BCSO deputies fired more than 18 rounds while attempting to shoot another man, killing six-year-old bystander Kameron Prescott inside his home; Bexar County later agreed to pay Prescott’s family $4.5 million to settle the resulting civil claim. In another BCSO killing, Deputy Brandin Moran shot Jesus Benito Garcia in 2020 after responding to a mental-health/domestic crisis in which Garcia was reportedly on his knees holding a screwdriver to his own neck; Garcia’s family alleged that Moran arrived and shot him within seconds and later obtained a civil settlement.
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BCSO had also faced another highly contested mental-health shooting just a year before Norris was killed. Deputy John Rodriguez shot and killed Afghanistan combat veteran Damian Daniels at Daniels’ home in August 2020 after deputies had repeatedly responded to calls concerning his mental health. Daniels’ family and civil-rights attorneys disputed BCSO’s portrayal of Daniels as suicidal and publicly demanded accountability.
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Personnel problems were also substantial during the period surrounding Norris’ death. Records obtained by KSAT showed that Sheriff Salazar fired 102 deputies between 2017 and the end of 2020. During 2021 itself, numerous BCSO employees were arrested or investigated for alleged misconduct, including allegations involving domestic violence, sexual misconduct, falsification of jail records and other offenses. A BCSO firearms instructor was accused by multiple female cadets of inappropriate conduct, including allegations that he groped a cadet and used his authority over her training, while another BCSO lieutenant was investigated over alleged misconduct involving an inmate and her activities surrounding the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack.
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The Norris case therefore developed against an existing record of disputed BCSO fatal-force incidents, mental-health encounters ending in police gunfire, civil litigation over shootings, and substantial internal employee misconduct. Of particular importance in Norris’ individual case is that the agency’s own later state-filed custodial-death report did not reproduce a central element of the sheriff’s original justification narrative — the allegation that Trevino was dragged by Norris’ vehicle.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://www.kens5.com/article/news/local/law-enforcement/deputies-investigating-shooting-in-west-bexar-county/273-09626759-2e85-4ecf-9357-7d87b16811af
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021/10/02/why-is-he-even-out-here-sheriff-says-man-shot-by-deputy-had-been-brought-in-before-for-mental-health-assistance/
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021/10/06/he-did-not-deserve-to-die-father-of-man-killed-by-bcso-deputy-speaks-out/
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021/10/12/nearly-two-weeks-after-fatal-encounter-bcso-identifies-deputy-who-shot-and-killed-nicholas-norris/
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021/11/12/report-on-bcso-deputys-fatal-shooting-of-nicholas-norris-leaves-out-sheriffs-claims/
https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Family-members-ID-man-shot-killed-BCSO-deputy-16502147.php
https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Deputy-identified-who-fatally-shot-man-driving-16528285.php
https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Report-of-deputy-involved-fatal-shooting-16613755.php
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2020/09/01/attorneys-for-damian-daniels-family-meet-with-bexar-county-da-demand-justice-after-bcso-deputy-shot-and-killed-him/
https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Family-of-man-shot-by-Bexar-County-deputy-sue-16978568.php/
https://www.tpr.org/criminal-justice/2022-08-09/bexar-county-settles-lawsuit-with-family-of-man-shot-to-death-by-sheriffs-deputy
https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Family-of-6-year-old-boy-shot-and-killed-by-Bexar-14877045.php/
https://www.ksat.com/news/defenders/2021/02/10/bexar-county-sheriff-javier-salazar-fired-more-than-100-deputies-during-his-first-term-very-few-were-reinstated/
https://www.ksat.com/news/defenders/2021/04/09/bcso-academy-instructor-removed-from-contact-with-public-after-groping-allegation/
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021/12/20/bexar-county-law-enforcement-officer-arrests-rose-20-percent-in-2021/