ST. CROIX — Nearly a year after her eldest son was shot and killed by police on the next block over from their home in LBJ Gardens, Luz Fulgence said she is still waiting for answers as the Virgin Islands Police Department prepares to conclude its internal investigation into the shooting.
With no findings yet released to explain why Alejandro “Alex” Torres III was fatally shot by an officer on July 17, 2025, Fulgence said she has been left in the dark about what happened and whether the officer’s actions will ultimately be deemed justified.
“No one is telling me anything,” Fulgence said. “No one is talking to me. No one calls me, so I don’t really know what’s going on with this case. It’s terrible.”
Fulgence said all she wants is the truth about the circumstances surrounding her son’s death.
“I want to know what really happened,” she said. “As a mother, I want justice.”
On the day Torres was killed, Fulgence said she called 911 seeking assistance because her 48-year-old son was under the influence of crack and experiencing another episode similar to others police had responded to in the past. She expected officers to calm him down without violence, as they had done previously.
Instead, two officers from the Special Operations Bureau encountered Torres on the next block over from her home, where one officer fatally shot him once in the chest.
“I didn’t call police on the scene to go and kill my child,” Fulgence said in the days following the shooting. “I called police to come and help him because he’s on drugs. He’s sick. He had needed help. He didn’t need police to shoot him in his chest.”
READ MORE: Mother demands answers in fatal police shooting of Alejandro Torres III after calling 911 for help
Almost a year later, Fulgence continues to question why officers resorted to deadly force.
“I believe that they should have done much better because he was addicted to drugs, and that’s a sickness,” she said, adding that her son was receiving help for his addiction. “I don’t believe that they should have killed him how they killed him brutally because it was two against one.”
She also disputes that her son posed the type of threat that required lethal force, suggesting the officer could have used a taser.
“My son wasn’t fighting,” she said. “He was screaming for help because I could have heard his voice.”
Jason Marsh, deputy commissioner of Professional Standards, said the department’s Force Investigation Team, operating under Internal Affairs, is conducting the investigation. He said investigators have spent months reviewing evidence, interviewing the officers involved.
“Then the report is presented to the Force Review Board,” Marsh said. “And then the Force Review Board will then make a founded determination if the actions of the officers were justified or not justified.”
Marsh said the investigation is nearing completion and clarified that although two officers responded to the call, only one discharged a firearm. Both officers have since returned to duty.
Attorney Dwayne Henry, who recently retired from the Office of the Territorial Public Defender and represented Torres in two non-related criminal cases, said he believes the Police Department is taking too long to complete its investigation. Henry said he thinks the VIPD is “slow walking” the investigation.
Fulgence said Detective Salim Ross met with her a couple months after the shooting and described what investigators observed on body camera footage recovered from one of the responding officers.
“What he said that he saw was that Alex was handcuffed,” she said.
Fulgence said, however, that she did not observe handcuffs on her son when she saw his body lying in the street after the shooting. If Torres was handcuffed, she questioned why he was not taken into custody at that time. She said she believes police did not provide a clear explanation for his death.
Fulgence said Ross told her she would later be allowed to view the recording herself, and that he would contact her to schedule a time. She said that call never came.
“I would like to see what really went on because I don’t know if they’re lying to me or they’re saying the truth,” she said.
Marsh said allowing her to see the footage is something the department must work on to ensure a policy is in place beforehand, noting the department has never released bodycam footage in the past.
“I’m not saying that she will not be able to but probably at a later date,” he said. “After the investigation is concluded, I would be better to answer that. We need to ensure that we have policies in place as to how it would happen.”
While Fulgence awaits official answers through body camera footage, she is left with the memory of hearing the shooting happen in real time.
“The last scream that Alex gave me was, ‘mommy, please come,’” she recalled. “That’s when I hear, ‘pow.’ When I hear that gunshot, God is my witness, the only thing I said was, ‘they killed my son.’”
She then walked around the corner and found her son lying on the ground.
“I walked back there — first thing I see was my son lying on the ground,” she said.
At the time, the Virgin Islands Police Department said officers responded to a 911 call at about 4:42 p.m. and that “responding officers made contact with the mother and son, however a struggle ensued with the son and both officers who responded.”
Although Torres struggled with drug addiction for years, Fulgence said she never stopped trying to help him overcome it.
At the time of his death, Henry said Torres had been working toward recovery after years of addiction. Following an earlier period of sobriety, Torres had joined a narcotics support group, attended church, and found employment with the Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources’ Division of Fish and Wildlife inspecting fishers’ catches before later relapsing.
When he was sober, people saw a different side of him, Fulgence said.
“He always wanted to help people in the community,” she said.
After losing her son, Fulgence said the absence of answers has made it difficult to find closure. She keeps his memory alive by looking at a photograph saved on her phone.
“Every day I watch it,” she said. “I will always remember him as my loving son.”
