What’s at stake?
An off-duty ICE agent was arrested by the Fresno Police Department early Friday morning. The ICE agent was found in handcuffs and a gunshot wound to his midsection following what, police say, was an altercation with local residents.
An off-duty 32-year-old ICE agent from Texas, who police said appeared “intoxicated and agitated,” was shot early Friday after reportedly attacking a 72-year-old Tower District man and his adult daughter outside the family’s home.
The police responded to several calls of a single gunshot around 3 a.m. in the area around the intersection of East Dudley Avenue and North Broadway Street.
Officers arriving at the scene found a man in handcuffs with a gunshot wound in his midsection. The man was later identified as David Gonzalez, 32, a federal agent from Texas working for ICE.
Fresno Police detectives on Friday concluded that the gunshot was the culmination of a woman of the Tower District neighborhood coming home to find Gonzalez sleeping on their lawn. The woman alerted their father, who lives in the home with her.
The two residents attempted to wake Gonzalez up, but the federal agent, who seemed to be intoxicated at the time of the event according to a police news release, attacked both the woman and her father. Both residents sustained visible injuries after the altercation. Police said the 72-year-old man then fired a single shot at Gonzalez, striking the off-duty federal agent.
Police described the shooting as defensive and said the gun was legal and the Tower District man was a vicitm in the case who would not face any criminal charges in connection with the incident.
The woman’s partner, an off-duty police officer, later placed Gonzalez in handcuffs.
Gonzalez is now in custody facing possible felony assault charges. It is still not known why Gonzalez was in Fresno, according to city police, but federal immigration agents have been ramping up detentions accross the state this week.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the person who police say pulled the trigger defending themselves. Police said the man who fired the shot was a 72-year-old man.
