Death by Cop 2021-2025
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Gabriel Michael Varela
Age : 17
Gender : Male
Race : Latino/a/e
Date : 09/16/2021
Location : 2507 8th Street
City : Wichita Falls
County : Wichita
State : Texas
Agency : Wichita Falls Police Department
Officer(s) :Not Disclosed
Cause of Death : Gunshot
Event : Killed by police during armed confrontation
OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :
On 09/16/2021, Wichita Falls police shot and killed 17-year-old Gabriel Micheal Varela following a lengthy barricade at a residence in the 3100 block of Lawrence Road. Varela was a senior at Wichita Falls High School. His obituary confirms his full name, age and date of death.
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Police responded after receiving information concerning an armed person at the residence. Officers surrounded the property and attempted to communicate with Varela during an extended standoff. Police alleged that Varela was armed with a handgun.
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According to the police account, officers attempted for several hours to persuade Varela to surrender. The Wichita Falls Police Department SWAT team was deployed during the barricade.
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Police alleged that Varela eventually emerged from the residence armed with a handgun. According to authorities, officers repeatedly ordered him to drop the weapon.
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Police alleged that Varela instead raised or pointed the handgun toward officers. Wichita Falls police then opened fire, striking him. Varela was transported for medical treatment but died from his injuries.
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Varela was only 17 years old. He was born on 08/31/2004 and had turned 17 approximately two weeks before police killed him. He attended Wichita Falls High School and was remembered by his family as someone who enjoyed baseball, football, animals, baking, video games and spending time with his siblings and friends.
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The shooting was documented in an Attorney General report filed by Wichita Falls police. The available reporting indicated that multiple officers fired during the encounter, but the publicly accessible sources reviewed for this update do not provide a reliable complete identification of every officer who discharged a weapon. The Officer(s) field should therefore remain Not Disclosed rather than assigning the shooting to an officer whose role cannot be firmly established.
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The available contemporary reporting does not establish that Varela fired at police before officers opened fire. The police justification instead centered on the allegation that he pointed a handgun toward officers following the prolonged barricade. That distinction should be preserved rather than describing the encounter as an exchange of gunfire unless later forensic or investigative records establish otherwise.
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The circumstances also place Varela's death within a mental health crisis context. Police were dealing with a teenager during a prolonged armed barricade, with officers reportedly spending hours attempting to obtain his surrender before the fatal confrontation. The precise nature of Varela's crisis and what information responding officers possessed about his mental state should be established from the underlying incident, dispatch and negotiation records rather than inferred from the eventual police shooting.
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The publicly accessible record is considerably thinner concerning what happened after the shooting. The Attorney General filing documents the police use of deadly force, but a detailed publicly available outside investigative report, grand-jury record or prosecutorial analysis reconstructing the shooting was not identified during this update.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND
The Wichita Falls officers who shot Gabriel Varela have not been reliably identified in the public records reviewed for this update.
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The inability to identify the shooting officers prevents the individual background investigation normally performed for this database, including searches for previous shootings, complaints, discipline, civil-rights litigation and other significant use-of-force incidents.
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The Wichita Falls Police Department has, however, subsequently experienced a significant documented accountability case. In 2025, the department investigated officers Daniel Wilson and Gulley following the arrest and treatment of a woman identified by the city as Ms. Lang. Police Chief Manuel Borrego later publicly described what occurred as a failure by the department and said both officers violated existing departmental policies. Wilson was terminated and Gulley resigned following suspension. The Texas Rangers opened an independent criminal investigation.
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The department itself subsequently announced expanded training involving responses to people experiencing mental health crises, de-escalation, arrest and control techniques, constitutional law and arrest criteria. Those reforms occurred years after Varela's killing and do not establish misconduct in his case, but they constitute substantive later departmental history concerning precisely the kinds of crisis-response and de-escalation practices relevant to armed confrontations.
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In May 2026, the City of Wichita Falls announced that former officer Daniel Wilson had been indicted in connection with the later case. City officials simultaneously said broader departmental reform efforts were underway.
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SOURCE LINKS :
https://www.timesrecordnews.com/story/news/2021/09/17/wichita-falls-police-shooting-gabriel-varela/8366920002/
https://www.texomashomepage.com/news/local-news/man-shot-killed-by-police-in-wichita-falls/
https://www.kswo.com/2021/09/17/teen-killed-officer-involved-shooting-wichita-falls/
https://www.texomashomepage.com/news/local-news/subject-killed-during-police-standoff-identified/
