Eight years after a shoplifting call at a north Dallas Home Depot turned deadly, the Dallas Police Department is still making sure Officer Rogelio Santander Jr. is not forgotten.
Today, the department posted a public remembrance marking his End of Watch date of April 25, 2018. Santander, badge No. 10934, was 27 when he died after being shot while helping detain a suspected shoplifter at the store. This killing shook the department and sparked a years-long legal battle over the retailer’s security practices.
What happened at the Home Depot
According to reporting from the Associated Press via CBS News, an off-duty officer and a Home Depot loss-prevention worker had detained Armando Luis Juarez on suspicion of shoplifting before on-duty officers arrived.
Body-camera footage and the arrest affidavit show Juarez pulled out a handgun inside a loss-prevention office and opened fire, wounding Santander, his partner Officer Crystal Almeida, and the loss-prevention employee. Santander died from his injuries the next morning.
Prosecution and sentence
Prosecutors charged Juarez with capital murder, and in January 2021, he pleaded guilty and received a life sentence without the possibility of parole after mental-health findings made a death sentence ineligible, as reported by The Dallas Morning News.
Officer Almeida has spoken publicly about the surgeries and lasting injuries she has dealt with since the shooting, underscoring how the violence that day did not end with the initial gunfire.
Legal fight over the retailer’s role
The Santander family and Officer Almeida later sued Home Depot, the private security firm, and the off-duty officer, alleging that the chain’s policies and the guards’ actions failed to disarm or properly detain Juarez before uniformed officers arrived, as reflected in court filings and reporting by KERA.
The case climbed all the way to the state’s highest court. In 2025, the justices narrowed potential liability for the defendants and reinstated portions of the trial court’s earlier dismissal of the lawsuit.
Department remembrance and earlier coverage
Today, the Dallas Police Department shared a brief End of Watch tribute on its official X account honoring Santander’s service and sacrifice; the post is embedded above and is also available on the department’s page at Dallas Police Department.
Police Officer Rogelio Santander, Jr., #10934 – End of Watch: April 25, 2018
— Dallas Police Dept (@DallasPD) April 25, 2026
Officer Rogelio Santander succumbed to a gunshot wound sustained the previous day while he and two other officers attempted to arrest a shoplifting suspect at a Home Depot store at 11682 Forest Central… pic.twitter.com/z9dRKYiSYN
Why the case still matters
The Supreme Court’s ruling clarified how far retailers’ duties extend toward responding officers and recognized circumstances where off-duty officers are effectively acting in their police role, findings laid out in the Supreme Court of Texas opinion.
That legal backdrop helps explain why a short memorial post can still land with such force. For Dallas officers and residents alike, the shooting at the Home Depot sits at the intersection of policy debates over big-box security, the blurred line between off-duty and on-duty policing, and the very personal loss of a young officer who never came home from what started as a routine call.
