by BRAD ROLLINS

A 17-year-old San Marcos man faces a barrage of felony charges for allegedly breaking into a duplex in the Rio Vista Terrace neighborhood early Tuesday where authorities say he told the resident he was a police officer and discharged a gun.

Derrick Terrell Jacobs is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and burglary of a habitation, both second-degree felonies; with impersonating a police officer, tampering with physical evidence and unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, all third-degree felonies; and with firearm theft, a state jail felony.

He is being held at the Hays County jail on bail totaling $210,000 for the six charges.

Investigators consider Tuesday’s home invasion atypical because they have found no apparent connections between the suspect and the victim, said San Marcos police Cmdr. Kelly Earnest, who leads the department’s Criminal Investigations division.

“It’s really odd [because] typically the two parties know each other. That kind of makes it outside the norm,” Earnest said. Also, she said, brazen burglaries of occupied residences are considerably more commonplace in the city’s apartment complexes than in neighborhoods.

At 4:18 a.m. May 12, San Marcos emergency dispatch received a call about a burglary in progress in the 1000 block of Haynes Street. As police officer Catherine McDonald drove toward the scene, she passed a vehicle on Riverside Drive that matched a vehicle description offered by the 911 caller, Earnest said. McDonald conducted a traffic stop near the San Marcos Nature Center and Jacobs was arrested within minutes of leaving the burgled home, Earnest said.

In the course of the burglary, Jacobs told the Haynes Street resident that he was a police officer searching for weapons. At some point, Jacobs fired a gun while still inside the home, Earnest said, but it was not immediately clear what Jacobs was aiming at, if at anything.

The victim, a man in his early 20s, was not injured during the burglary, but the gunshot “was too close for comfort,” Earnest said.

According to jail and court records, Jacobs had already been convicted as a juvenile for residential burglary when he was arrested again by the Hays County Sheriff’s Office on Feb. 24 on a charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child, a first-degree felony. He spent parts of three days in jail and was released on Feb. 26 after posting a $50,000 bond set by the late Hays County Pct. 1 Justice of the Peace Margie Hernandez, jail records state.

Court records offer no indication that Jacobs has been indicted by a grand jury for aggravated sexual assault of a child.

Map

COVER: STOCK PHOTO by BRANDON ANDERSON. SAN MARCOS MERCURY ILLUSTRATION by BRAD ROLLINS