During the march, Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy Thomas Wilson struck and immediately killed Salazar with a tear-gas projectile.

When Salazar returned to the US in 1968, he focused on the Mexican-American community and the Chicano movement, writing about East Los Angeles, an area largely ignored by the media except for coverage of crimes.

With a strong disparity of racial minorities in news organizations nationwide, Salazar felt it was his personal and professional responsibility to give necessary attention to the actions led by his fellow Chicanos in East Los Angeles.

In this piece, Salazar not only describes the evolving identity of Chicanos and the historic importance of the movement, but he details his frustration with the lack of Mexican-American representation among the elected representatives in the Los Angeles city council.

Salazar writes, "Mexican-Americans, though large in numbers, are so politically impotent that in Los Angeles, where the country's largest single concentration of Spanish-speaking live, they have no one of their own on the City Council.

[7] While local and national law enforcement were displeased with Salazar's reporting, he continued to write articles advocating the rights of the Chicano community.

[7] On August 29, 1970, Salazar was covering the National Chicano Moratorium March, organized to protest the Vietnam War, in which some believed that a disproportionate number of Latinos served and were killed.

[8] Salazar had taken a break from covering the march and was resting in a nearby bar when a tear gas round fired by police through a curtained doorway struck him in the head, killing him.

[9] A coroner's inquest ruled the shooting of the tear gas projectile to be "death at the hands of another," but Tom Wilson, the sheriff's deputy who fired the shot that killed Salazar, was never prosecuted.

The riot started when the owners of the Green Mill liquor store, located around the corner from the Silver Dollar Bar on Whittier Boulevard, called in a complaint about people stealing from them.

The story of Salazar's killing was the subject of "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan," a 1971 article by gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson for Rolling Stone magazine.

[10] On February 22, 2011, the Office of Independent Review released a report of its examination of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department records on the death of Salazar.

During meetings with the district attorney in regard to the incident that led to Salazar's death, many Chicanos attended to voice their support as well as show a united force against police brutality.