Jonathan Joss’ Neighbors Recount the Lead-Up to the Fatal Shooting
After King of the Hill actor Jonathan Joss was shot to death on Sunday evening, his community in San Antonio is now grappling with the ugliness of the murder with the eyes of the country upon them.
The San Antonio Police Department has alleged that, on Sunday night, after Joss and his husband Tristan Kern de Gonzales returned from a trip to Austin, neighbor Sigfredo Alvarez Ceja fired multiple shots into the long-time TV actor before fleeing in a vehicle. Paramedics pronounced Joss dead on the scene and police apprehended Ceja one block away, soon after charging Ceja with felony first-degree murder. Joss’ husband has since claimed that the killing was a homophobia-motivated hate crime, but the other residents in the area say that tensions between Joss and his neighbors stemmed from the late actor’s “erratic” behavior in the months leading up to his tragic murder.
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The San Antonio daily news website MySA recently published their report on the other neighbors’ s of the horrific slaying as well as the background of Joss’ relationship with his community. Said one neighbor grimly, “We all knew it was going to end up like this because of his antics.”
Speaking to MySA, San Antonio resident Isabel Caballero says that Joss was widely known as an unstable presence in the neighborhood. “He would just walk up and down the street. He would just like scream,” Caballero said of Joss’ behavior. “He was just very loud, very loud. But we knew how he was, so we wouldn’t disturb him. Even if he looked at us, talked mess to us, we just ignored him because we knew that’s how he was.”
An anonymous resident corroborated Caballero’s of Joss’ behavior, adding that the actor “wasn’t a good neighbor.” The source said that Joss would “always do erratic things in the street,” sometimes even proclaiming that “he was God.” This neighbor also claimed that numerous community had called 911 about Joss’ disruptive behavior over the last year, which the San Antonio Police Department confirmed.
According to SAPD, police officers had visited Joss’ property 40 different times in response to calls from concerned neighbors since January 2024, with calls ranging from welfare checks to disturbances with neighbors to the tragic fire that destroyed Joss’ childhood home earlier this year. The anonymous neighbor said that none of these calls led to tangible change in Joss’ behavior, nor did the actor ever gain access to the mental-health resources that she believes could have changed his fate.
“I’m so sad it had to come to this,” the neighbor lamented. “It’s sad cause this could have been prevented if he had gotten the help he needed.” The neighbor said that she believes Ceja murdered Joss because he was “fed up” with the actor’s disruptive behavior.
SAPD says that they are still investigating the motives behind the murder.
