HAVE CONNECTIONS? SHOOT AT WILL, NO CHARGES

By Juan Montoya

When a shooting of two people was reported at the Toucan Lounge last Aug. 12, everyone was eager to find out who the victims and the perpetrator were.

Something seemed amiss after the Brownsville Police Dept. refused to release a copy of the police report, a mug of the accused, and the names of the victims for days after the armed confrontation.

Soon, the word got out and people began to put together one and one.

First, the shooter was none other than Willie Gonzales Jr., who just happened to be the son of longtime City of Brownsville Secretary Lydia Gonzales and her husband Willie, a much liked city employee himself. 

Secondly, the shooter was a city employee working as an enforcement officer with the Public Health Department.

Now, seven months later, the new Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz has decided not to prosecute Gonzales citing the unwillingness of one of the victims to testify against the shooter and a finding that the 40-year-old had shot the two victims in self defense.

A state grand jury finally indicted Gonzales last October – two  months after the incident – on accusations that he fired his handgun and injured a man and a woman in the parking lot of the bar.The jury issued two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of unlawfully carrying a weapon on alcohol premises on the man.

Her was placed by the city administration on administrative leave without pay. City Manager Charlie Cabler said Gonzales has been brought back to work and given several assignments.

Now, as we all know, the DA can choose to prosecute defendants even though the victim says he or she won;t testify against them. It happens in domestic abuse cases all the time. In this case, there were two people shot outside a bar with the potential that a stray bullet could have injured even more. 

Why was there a reluctance in this case to prosecute bad little Willie?

The reader of the local daily has no way of knowing that one of the victims – the male – is paralyzed from the waist down. Did Gonzales and his family take care of him so that he or his relatives wouldn't make a fuss? And what about the other victim, the woman? Does knowing that someone like Gonzales is obviously receiving favored treatment from the authorities deter her from testifying against him? He did, after all, shoot her once already.
We don't know the "arrangements" made in the Gonzales case, but we do not that the court papers were filed without the usual fanfare of a press release and an elaborate presentation by DA spokeswoman Melissa Zamora, who we may note by the way, is still a Brownsville city commissioner with close ties to Cabler and the city bunch.

The word on the street after the incident happened was that Gonzales and his girlfriend were partying with another couple and that his girlfriend continued to drink with the male at the bar when Gonzales left. After all, it was a Sunday and he worked the next day. Someone then called him to tell him his girlfriend was drinking at the lounge and he – his gun in his glove compartment – went there. A confrontation – not "altercation" as the daily called it – erupted and he was chased out of the bar. Once outside, when his car was surrounded by people, Willie got his gun and started blazing away. He then turned himself in to his friends and coworkers, the cops.

Now he can walk free and, should he feel threatened, shoot again. 

Ask yourself: Really, would anyone else have received the same treatment?
It is way too early for this new group at the DA's office to make decisions that trigger these kind of questions. In view of the ongoing federal probe into the judicial doings, a Spanish saying is very apropos.
To the new guys: "Vez la tempestad y no te hincas?" (Still, you see the storm and do not kneel.)