San Antonio — A major security lapse caused by a lack of connectivity between the Bexar County juvenile system and the adult system led to the wrongful release of convicted murderer Angel Salas, who was recaptured on Tuesday night.
Salas committed a murder while he was still a juvenile. He was later caught at age 17 and entered the adult system on a separate case. During that process, investigators connected him to the Twin Peaks killing of Michael Vargas. Salas accepted a plea deal for murdering the 32-year-old during an attempted car break-in at a Twin Peaks restaurant in November 2024 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
After taking the plea, Salas was transferred to the Bexar County Jail so he could be held until the state picked him up to begin serving his sentence. But once he arrived, jail intake staff could not see his murder conviction or his twenty-year sentence in the Odyssey system. That information was still inside the juvenile system, which the jail could not access. Without any warning or flag, staff believed Salas could be released, and they let him go…