Mother Demands Justice for 22-Year-Old Daughter Executed Gangland-Style in San Angelo

Karen Freeman’s hands shook as she grasped the chain around her neck and pulled out a winged pendant with a large, clear, heart-shaped gemstone in the center of it.

Fighting back tears as her jaw trembled, Freeman explained the story behind the necklace she never takes off.

“I had to have Tabitha cremated,” she said, her head bowed to the pendant. “I could not bear the thought of putting her in the ground and leaving her there. So she’s with me. I wear her all the time. There’s supposed to be a little bit of her ashes in there, and then I have her at home.”

Karen Freeman lost her 22-year-old daughter Tabitha on Sept. 1, 2013 to two teenagers wearing bulletproof vests and wielding shotguns. At an apartment in northwest San Angelo, Freeman said Tabitha had been out with a friend at Midnight Rodeo that Saturday night, and accompanied her friend to a party at the Greenwood Apartment complex that ended abruptly with gunfire at around 3:18 a.m. on the Sunday before Labor Day.

 “…evidently Tabitha was making calls trying to get somebody to come and pick her up because she didn’t want to be there,” her mother said, then continued to tell a story of alleged gang violence and execution that ended two lives in the space of seconds.

According to a complaint filed at the courthouse, four individuals were in apartment #11 when 19-year-old Johnny Garcia and 18-year-old Daniel Uvalle—both at the time a year younger—entered through an unlocked sliding glass door.

Tabitha Freeman, Alvaro Carillo, Idalia Limon and Jesse Salazar were visiting and watching television in the living room when Uvalle and Garcia entered, obviously bent on a path of violence.

Limon told investigating officers that when the gunmen entered, Garcia, who had been involved in a physical and verbal altercation with 22-year-old Alvaro Carillo within the last five days, pointed the gun at him and declared he was going to shoot him.

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Standing nearby with his own shotgun trained on the other three in the room, Uvalle threatened to shoot anyone who interfered with Garcia’s plans to kill. Limon then got in between Garcia and Carillo, however when Carillo pushed her away, Garcia fired a single round into his face, killing him instantly.

Garcia then turned to Tabitha Freeman and shot her in the chest, the complaint states, before pushing the barrel of the murder weapon against Idalia Limon’s chest and stating he would shoot her, too. Limon managed to push the gun away before Garcia could fire, and the gunmen ran from the residence, says the complaint.

“They caught Uvalle at his home in Grape Creek and they caught Johnny Garcia in Boerne, Texas,” Karen Freeman said Tuesday morning in front of the Tom Green County Courthouse.

It’s been one year, 37 days since the two known Latin Kings members took her daughter’s life, and Freeman spent several hours of her birthday Tuesday morning with a small group of friends picketing “Justice for Tabitha” before the courthouse.

Inside, attorneys were meeting with Judge Ben Woodward at a pre-trial hearing of Daniel Uvalle, which has been rescheduled twice since May 2014. A jury trial has been canceled and rescheduled four times, and another pre-trial hearing has been scheduled for Nov. 4 at 9:00 a.m.

“The accomplice’s trial has been rescheduled every month since May the 19th,” Freeman said, exasperated. “The actual shooter doesn’t have a trial date yet and it’s my understanding that they are in seclusion in Tom Green County Jail. The DA told me she’s got a good case, she’s ready to go. Then why is it taking so long to get it started?”

Dressed in neon pink and lime green and carrying colorful poster boards decorated with pictures of Tabitha Freeman and various slogans, a handful of close friends paced back and forth around the courthouse perimeter, waving signs at passing traffic and pausing to explain their cause to anyone who walked by.

Tabitha’s mother and their close friends have picketed outside the courthouse during every pre-trial hearing held since her daughter’s assailants were indicted in November 2013.

“I’ll be here every time,” she said. “I just don’t want anybody else to have to go through this.”

Speaking to how her life has changed since the death of her daughter, Freeman explained why she needs to be present outside the courthouse. “Tabitha was my only family. It was just me and her. It’s always been just me and her and that part of me is gone,” she said, ducking behind the large pink sign she was holding as she regained her composure.

“I don’t know how to continue without her. I get up, go to work, come home, come here for this every time, and I just can’t, I can’t do anything until I at least know that they’re going to prison,” she said wearily. “I need this phase of it to be over and my baby girl can rest in peace.”

At the time of her daughter’s death, Karen Freeman was living in Cedar Park, but was planning on returning to San Angelo just hours after the shooting to pick up her daughter and take her to visit her new home. She was hoping Tabitha would want to move out of San Angelo after seeing the small city just northwest of Austin, and had worked out a plan to pick her up after leaving church Sunday morning.

“I found out about it (her daughter’s death) from a friend who saw it on Facebook,” Freeman said sadly. “I had to call the police department myself. I told them I would be there in exactly three hours—I think it was more like two and a half—they said they were still on the scene investigating. I guess she was still laying, I guess, on the ground. When I got here they told me they had sent her to Lubbock for an autopsy. When I asked who identified her, they said they identified her by picture.”

It was Thursday morning—four days after the shooting—before Freeman was able to see her daughter. She received a phone call from Shaffer Funeral Home, who had received the body the evening before, and immediately made her way to the home where her 22-year-old daughter lie.

“For those days (between the murder and her body being returned), I was just in a fog. I knew it wasn’t her. It was a case of mistaken identity,” her mother said, with tears welling up in her eyes. “When I got to the funeral home and she was laying there, she looked just as beautiful as ever. She looked like she was just sound asleep and I begged her to open her eyes, I begged her to open her eyes.”

Growing up with a father on the police force, Karen Freeman said she’s aware of the dangers that exist in the world, but she’s never been on this side of violence. The struggle for a mother who has lost her child is a lonely battle, she said, and she hopes that raising awareness about the murder of her daughter will prevent another mother from going through that hell.

Mentioning the recent murder of 5-year-old Naiya Villegas, Freeman described how she’s felt for the past year. “I feel for that mother (of Naiya Villegas), but when your child is killed it’s an individual hell,” she said. “You can say there’s group support, but there’s not. It’s an individual hell that you go through every day for the rest of your life. I just feel hollow inside, but in my mind I feel for her, I understand somewhat. I had my baby girl for 22 years. She only had hers for five.” 

Tabitha Freeman was a 2010 Lake View graduate and had just begun planning for college when her life was taken in 2013. Her mother said that a counselor at the high school told her Tabitha had approached her about attending Howard College in the fall, and though she wasn’t sure of the path yet, Tabitha was considering going into media or becoming a kindergarten teacher.

Since her daughter’s death, Karen Freeman has sought to provoke change in the criminal justice system, using the facts of her daughter’s case as arsenal. She’s sent letters to Senator John Cornyn’s office pushing for a law that requires a defendant’s entire criminal history to be presented before a judge at hearings and asked her daughter’s friends to fight for justice.

“It cannot all be blamed on the criminals. The justice system has got to change. Before anybody presents to a judge for whatever they’ve been arrested on, their entire criminal record should be presented at that time, not just that offense. And it’s got to come from here,” she motioned to the courthouse.

“I’ve begged…all of Tabitha’s friends and family, I’ve begged them: you are the ones that are responsible,” she said. “You’ve got to take this town back. You cannot let Tabitha’s death be in vain. We shouldn’t have to move and take our grandchildren just to feel safe and get away from drugs.”

Freeman says she misses everything about her daughter, and since her death has taken note of rampant shootings and violence occurring in San Angelo. What she wants, she said, is justice for her daughter, but also an effort from the community as whole to combat drugs and violence and take a stand for citizen safety. She is hoping that her daughter's killers will soon be brought to court.

Daniel Uvalle is scheduled for another pre-trial hearing on Nov. 4 at 9:00 a.m. Johnny Garcia has had two pre-trial hearing and two jury trials canceled since May 2014. There is currently no date set for his trial.

Both Uvalle and Garcia have been indicted for capital murder of multiple persons. If convicted, they can be sentenced to either life without parole or death.