Nearly 17-years after being arrested, charged and later convicted of a murder he did not commit, 38-year-old Quintin Alonzo walked out of Dallas County Court a free man Wednesday.

In 2001, Santos Gauna and his parents were both shot at a graduation party in Dallas when a fight broke out. Gauna’s parents survived but Santos would later die.

Ballistic evidence showed that all three victims had been shot with the same .38 revolver and investigators initially focused on Licho Escamilla as the gunman.

But when a witness falsely picked Alonzo out of a photo lineup, the case shifted and it was Alonzo that investigators mistakenly focused in on.



Escamilla later confessed to the murder and the Dallas County Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity unit re-examined the evidence and found that Alonzo was, in fact, innocent.



On Wednesday, Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson offered her apologies to Alonzo who had asked to be released before June 1 so he could attend his daughter’s high school graduation.