Newlyweds Jonathan Joss and Tristan Kern de Gonzales held each other in their final moment together on Sunday.
Joss, the 59-year-old voice actor best known as John Redcorn from “King of the Hill,” had just been
shot in the head in front of their San Antonio, Texas home.
"I didn't want him to struggle and everything so I decided to tell him I loved him. And despite the severity of everything he was able to look up at me and acknowledge what I was saying so I know he heard me," Kern de Gonzales, 32, said. "I just kept telling him 'it's okay. You need to cross over. You don't need to keep struggling. You need to go ahead and cross over easy.'"
Kern de Gonzales said Joss' alleged killer also had final words for the actor. He called him and his husband "jotos," a Spanish slur for gay people.
"I've been called that word while I was sitting on a bench with Jonathan, eating lunch," Kern de Gonzales said. "And I got called that holding Jonathan while he died."
Shortly after, police arrested one of the pair's neighbors, Sigfredo Alvarez Ceja, for Joss' killing.
Kern de Gonzales says he believes Ceja, 56, killed his husband because of his sexual orientation. But the San Antonio Police Department
says there's "no evidence" to indicate that Joss' killing was motivated by hate. Authorities have not yet revealed a motive or additional details of their investigation into the shooting.
Police records obtained by NBC News and interviews with Kern de Gonzales and the pair’s neighbors paint a complicated picture of what led up to the voice actor’s tragic killing.
Ceja could not be reached for comment. He has not yet acquired an attorney, according to the Bexar County District Clerk’s Office.
Tristan Kern de Gonzales and Jonathan Joss.Courtesy Tristan Kern de Gonzales
Kern de Gonzalez, who lived in his husband's childhood home since March 2024, said that he and Joss were regularly at odds with their neighbors, including Ceja, in recent years.
He claims that many neighbors would hurl anti-gay slurs at them and complain about them being "loud," making them feel unwanted in the neighborhood.
Police were called to respond to incidents at their home more than four dozen times, according to call logs obtained by NBC News, with most of the calls labeled as "disturbances."
One of the pair's neighbors, who asked that their name not be shared due to fear of retaliation, said Joss was difficult to live by.
"He's been a nightmare," the neighbor said.
Kern de Gonzales acknowledged that his husband had a tendency to be "loud."
"Me and Jonathan would be out there late at night playing the drums, singing, being a nuisance," Kern de Gonzales said. "If you're going to make it hard for us to live here, you ain't going to get no sleep."
The couple's relationship with Ceja was particularly contentious.
A spokesperson for SAPD confirmed with NBC News that the police department's "SAFFE" unit, which works to prevent crimes, had been mediating a dispute between Ceja and Joss for over a year.
In June 2024, Ceja told police that Joss approached his house with a crossbow and hurled racial slurs at him, according to a separate police report. Joss confirmed to police that he walked over to Ceja's house to "talk about their dogs fighting with each other," according to the report.
The report adds that Joss "got very defensive and stated that he does not bother" Ceja "at all."
Authorities later searched Joss' home and retrieved a crossbow from his living room, police records say.
And in January, Joss accused Ceja of burning their house down, according to police records.
Joss told police that on the morning of the fire, he was using a barbecue in his living room because he did not have heat or electricity, according to the report. However, he said he turned the barbecue off before leaving the house to get lunch.
Tristan Kern de Gonzales, left, and Jonathan Joss, center.Courtesy Tristan Kern de Gonzales
He told police that an unnamed individual saw Ceja on his property the day before and suggested Ceja was responsible, according to the report.
"I have classified this fire to be undetermined in nature at this time but cannot rule out human involvement intentional or unintentional," the officer filling out the report wrote.
The fire caused the pair to be homeless, Kern de Gonzales said. But that did not stop them from getting married. They wed on Valentine's Day in Houston.
"It was a very nice, simple ceremony, you know, just me and him and it, it really suited us," he said. "We were really and really proud to be married.”
Kern de Gonzales said that he and his husband returned to their property on Sunday to retrieve mail. When they arrived, he said they found the skull of a dog on their property. The pair thought the skull belonged to their dog that perished in a fire and was placed there by a neighbor as a way to taunt them.
The incident prompted Joss to march up and down their street with a pitchfork and begin yelling, Kern de Gonzales said.
Several minutes later, he said, Ceja allegedly pulled up to their property and shot Joss. According to a police report from the Sunday shooting, Ceja told officers, "I shot him" upon his arrest on Sunday.
“I could give two f----s less if me or my husband had 50 pitchforks in every orifice of our body rolling up and down that street like tumbleweed," he said. "It don’t matter."
