Early one July morning in 2019, Bexar County sheriff’s deputies rolled down the quiet residential streets of Castle Hills with a pair of bombshell arrest warrants. The San Antonio-area bedroom community was in the throes of one of the biggest political scandals in its history. The deputies had warrants to arrest two of its major players. Sylvia Gonzalez, a 72-year-old newcomer to Castle Hills’ city council, was at her eye doctor’s office when she received terrifying news.
Gonzalez says she ran for office that same year because city officials were neglecting Castle Hills’ infrastructure and alleges her arrest was part of a plot by rivals to punish her for speaking out. “I never dreamed this would happen to me,” she said in an interview. For their part, city officials are arguing that Gonzalez’s lawsuit should be dismissed because they’d simply done their jobs by reporting and investigating a crime.
Former Castle Hills City Council member Sylvia Gonzalez is the plaintiff in a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Other city officials and their allies also saw the situation as high-stakes. In court, Gonzalez and Wenger’s critics alleged that the two women “conspired” to remove Rapelye and reinstall a former city manager. Police alleged that Wenger planned to “give the job to her very good friend.”
Top city officials later described that exchange this way in an arrest warrant affidavit: Gonzalez panicked after being accused of obtaining signatures under false pretenses and tried to make off with the petition to cover her tracks. Security videos of Gonzalez “show several furtive movements,” according to the affidavit.
That same day, Siemens, the police chief, told his sergeant to expect a complaint from the mayor about Gonzalez, according to a police report. When Gonzalez arrived at city hall for the July 9, 2019, council meeting, she was approached by City Attorney Marc Schnall, who claimed that the Bexar County sheriff who administered her oath of office wasn’t authorized to do so, according to a lawsuit Gonzalez later filed. When she tried to participate in the July 17 council meeting, Schnall said her seat was vacant.
In both the Castle Hills and Leon Valley cases, Bexar County prosecutors stepped in and dismissed the charges. The criminal cases against Gonzalez and Wenger were dropped in August 2019, and the district attorney’s office asked a judge to drop the city’s civil suit to remove them from office in January 2020.