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Inset Left: Carlos Portillo appears in a booking photo; Background image: the Oak Creek Apartments in San Antonio. (Bexar County Jail; Screengrab via KSAT)
A Texas man was arrested on Monday after being found walking the streets drenched in blood, acting strange, and screaming right around the time the man’s wife was found dead in a nearby apartment complex in northwestern San Antonio.
Carlos Portillo, 44, stands accused of one count each of murder in the first degree and felony drug possession in the second degree, according to Bexar County court records reviewed by Law&Crime.
The incident on Vance Jackson Road was called in as a disturbance “where a man was acting erratically screaming and covered in blood” just minutes after 7 a.m., according to preliminary information obtained by Law&Crime.
“When officers arrived at the location, they contacted the man (suspect) and asked the suspect whose blood was on him,” the police document reads. “The suspect told police it was his wife’s blood (victim) and that the victim was inside their apartment shot. Officers went to the suspect’s apartment and found the victim unresponsive.”
Neither the police nor the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office have identified the slain 51-year-old woman by name.
A San Antonio Police Department spokesperson told Law&Crime the official police report on the case has yet to be finalized.
Law enforcement was initially tight-lipped about the suspect and the victim in the case except to say that the two appeared to be related to one another — Portillo was publicly identified on Tuesday.
In comments to San Antonio-based ABC affiliate KSAT, San Antonio Police Sgt. Steven Bratina relayed grim additional details — saying that Portillo was covered in blood “from the waist, up.”
“He was walking up and down the sidewalk here, just acting very bizarrely,” Bratina told the TV station. “One person called and thought he might try to step into traffic.”
Officers first worked to take control of the crimson-coated man in bizarre straits. And then the calculus quickly changed.
“About the same time, we got a call for a body inside an apartment. So officers made entry and they did, indeed, find the body of a woman,” Bratina told KSAT.
According to police, the victim died from at least one gunshot wound.
“The victim was pronounced deceased at the scene,” police wrote in the preliminary information. “The suspect was taken into custody without incident. It is unknown at this time why the suspect shot the victim. This is still an active investigation.”
Bratina also told KLAS that the gun believed to have been used in the murder was recovered near the scene of the crime.
A prehearing in the case is currently slated for March 12.
Portillo has a criminal record dating back to the late 1990s, court records reviewed by the San Antonio Express-News show. The defendant has previously been charged with evading arrest, assault causing bodily injury, burglary of a vehicle, and felony firearm possession.
