A crowd of Juneteenth partyers outside an east Austin housing development turned violent, with several reportedly beating a man to death after the car he was riding in apparently struck a child.
Witnesses reported that several males attacked David Rivas Morales, 40, who was riding home from a painting job with a co-worker.
A preliminary autopsy showed Morales, who stepped out of the vehicle to defend the driver from the crowd, died of blunt trauma, police said.
No arrests have been made.
Police declined to identify the 3-year-old boy struck in a parking lot Tuesday night but said he was not seriously injured.
Police said hundreds packed into the housing development’s parking lot as 3,000 attending a city-sponsored Juneteenth festival a block away dispersed.
Juneteenth celebrates June 19, 1865, when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston with news of the Emancipation Proclamation, which had freed slaves two years earlier.
Police Cmdr. Harold Piott, who leads the department’s homicide division, said he had never seen such a spontaneous eruption of mob violence.
“I’ve been doing this for 28 years. This is the first time I can ever recall something like this,” he said.
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He attributed the crowd’s reaction to the boy being struck, although he suspected alcohol might have played a role.