Two males were rushed to the hospital early Thursday morning after a shooting near the east entrance of Phil Hardberger Park on San Antonio's North Side, with police saying a juvenile was hit in the knee and a man in his 20s suffered possible life-threatening injuries to his abdomen. San Antonio police officers responded to the 13200 block of Blanco Road near Wurzbach Parkway around 5 a.m., and as of Thursday morning, a suspect remains at large.
According to KSAT, an SAPD sergeant said both victims were shot in the lower body, with the juvenile suffering non-life-threatening injuries to his knee while the other victim, described as a man in his 20s, sustained more serious wounds. Police told the outlet they had no information on the shooter as investigators combed the remote stretch of Blanco Road for clues. As of Thursday morning, San Antonio police were still searching for the suspect and had not released a motive.
Additional detail from KENS 5 specifies that the second victim, the man in his upper 20s, was shot in the side of the abdomen, with his injuries described as potentially life-threatening. Investigators told the station that neither victim was armed at the time of the shooting, complicating any early theory of a mutual confrontation. Witnesses at the scene gave conflicting accounts of what led up to the gunfire, the station reported, leaving detectives to sort through competing versions of events as they work to identify a suspect.
A Stretch of Blanco Road With a Violent Past
The 13200 block of Blanco Road sits adjacent to the east entrance of Phil Hardberger Park, a 313-acre urban natural area bisected by Wurzbach Parkway that includes public trails, outdoor classrooms, and the Robert L.B. Tobin Land Bridge, according to Friends of San Antonio Natural Areas. It is not the first time this exact stretch has drawn a heavy police response. In March 2025, officers were dispatched to the Hardberger Park dog park parking lot after a family member reported suicide threats, and found a father and his 1-year-old son dead from stab wounds in what investigators determined was a murder-suicide, per KSAT.
Two years earlier, in March 2023, officers investigating the same 13000 block of Blanco Road for a welfare check, prompted by neighbors reporting gunshots around 8 p.m., found a 27-year-old man dead from multiple gunshot wounds inside an apartment. That case, also documented by KSAT, underscores a pattern of severe violence concentrated along this particular corridor near the park's edge.
Citywide Crime Is Down, But Not Here
The shooting comes even as San Antonio has posted some of its steepest violent crime declines in years. Homicides dropped 8% during the first half of 2026 compared to midyear 2025, continuing a downward trend that has pushed the city's homicide rate 12% below pre-pandemic levels, according to the San Antonio Report. Total reported crime fell 13% in 2025, with crimes against persons dropping 9% to 28,361 incidents, KSAT reported separately, citing Police Chief William McManus.
But those citywide gains have not been evenly distributed. While San Antonio's hot-spot policing strategy cut citywide violent crime by 10% and reduced crime by 22% in targeted areas through 2024, North San Antonio police substations saw no overall change in violent crime during that same stretch, per the San Antonio Report. That stagnation has kept commercial and residential corridors along Blanco Road and Wurzbach Parkway a recurring flashpoint even as other parts of the city see measurable improvement.
Blanco Road has generated a string of other violent incidents in recent months. In May, a business owner on the 18400 block of Blanco Road shot a suspect in the leg following a knife threat and weeks of alleged harassment, a case Hoodline covered in its report on the shopkeeper shooting, with SAPD investigating under Texas self-defense statutes. Once a suspect is identified in Thursday's shooting, any charge involving a deadly weapon would fall under Texas Penal Code § 22.02, which classifies assault with a deadly weapon as a second-degree felony punishable by 2 to 20 years in state prison and fines up to $10,000, according to Hindieh Law, though the statute notes charges can escalate to a first-degree felony under aggravating factors.
For now, the key questions in Thursday's shooting remain unanswered. Police have not identified a suspect or a motive, and it is unclear from available reporting whether the gunfire originated near an apartment complex or closer to the park grounds. The condition of the man with abdominal injuries had not been updated as of Thursday morning.
