A jury convicted Roland Contreras Jr. in the 2023 shooting death of Gabrielle Del Angel before he accepted a punishment deal.

BEXAR COUNTY, Texas — A man convicted in the fatal shooting of a woman sitting in a Jeep outside a South Side taco stand was sentenced March 27 to 50 years in prison, closing a case that began with a brief parking-lot confrontation on April 6, 2023.

The sentence followed a fast-moving day in court. A Bexar County jury found Roland Contreras Jr., 35, guilty of murder, and he then accepted a punishment agreement that set his prison term at 50 years. Prosecutors also said the case involved an attempted shooting of Gabrielle Del Angel’s husband, turning what began as an argument outside a food truck into a murder and aggravated-assault prosecution with long-delayed consequences.

According to court reporting and the arrest affidavit described in local coverage, Del Angel and her husband had stopped for food at a taco stand in the 1800 block of Southwest Military Drive, near Commercial Avenue, at about 9:30 p.m. Her husband was standing in line when Contreras approached with a gun and began yelling. The husband ran back to the Jeep, where Del Angel was waiting on the passenger side. As he tried to reverse out, he hit a parked vehicle. Contreras then fired through the driver’s side window. The bullet struck Del Angel in the chest. Police later said she did not appear to be the intended target.

The shooting did not end at the food stand. Del Angel’s husband drove to a nearby gas station at Southwest Military Drive and Commercial Avenue to get help, but Del Angel was pronounced dead there. Investigators later said the husband and Contreras knew each other through an ex-girlfriend, a detail that offered some explanation for why the two men crossed paths but did not fully answer the larger question of motive. Public reporting on the case has described the confrontation as sudden and brief. No account in the available coverage laid out a longer exchange or an earlier fight at the scene, leaving the precise spark for the argument unclear even after the conviction.

What became clearer over time was the scale of the loss. Del Angel, 33, was remembered by relatives as “Gabby,” a mother of three and a special education teacher in Southside Independent School District. Her obituary said she was born in San Antonio and left behind her husband, children, mother, siblings and extended family. That personal history gave the trial a dimension beyond the charges, because the case was not only about a shot fired in seconds but also about the removal of a teacher and parent from a South Side community that knew her in daily life, not just from crime coverage.

Contreras did not surrender right away. Police tracked him to a home in the 300 block of Humboldt, about 2 miles from the shooting scene, where authorities said he barricaded himself inside. The standoff lasted about 12 hours. When SWAT officers finally entered, Contreras was gone. He remained at large for about a month before a covert police unit found and arrested him. That stretch between the killing and the arrest added another chapter to the case and extended the uncertainty for Del Angel’s family as prosecutors worked toward trial in Bexar County.

The courtroom ending came quickly once jurors got the case. Local outlets reported that deliberations lasted roughly 30 to 41 minutes before the guilty verdict. During the punishment phase, Contreras chose a plea deal that set the sentence at 50 years. Reporting from the hearing said he will be eligible for parole after serving 25 years. The verdict and sentence resolved the criminal case’s central question of guilt, but they did not erase the abruptness of the violence: an argument in a food-truck parking lot, one shot through a window, and a woman who never made it home.

Contreras is now headed to prison under the March 27 sentence, and no further major trial proceedings were reported immediately after the hearing. The case stands closed at the trial-court level unless future appeals or parole review change that timeline.

Author note: Last updated April 18, 2026.