After being shot multiple times by ICE agents during an arrest in California, a man is set to face charges that he assaulted a federal officer with his vehicle, officials said.
Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez is accused of driving his car forward and striking an agent before reversing backward into a law enforcement vehicle after he was pulled over earlier this month, federal prosecutors said.
The Department of Homeland Security said ICE agents fired defensive shots at Mendoza after he tried to drive into them.
DHS said they were conducting an enforcement stop on April 7, targeting Mendoza, 36, in Patterson, a city about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco. Officials described him as a suspected gang member wanted for questioning in El Salvador related to a killing.
Mendoza’s lawyer Patrick Kolasinski has said his client panicked and tried to flee when ICE agents blocked his car.
Dashcam footage obtained by KCRA-TV shows three officers standing around a vehicle stopped on the side of a road. One of the officers appears to be touching the driver’s side window when the car begins to back up and turn, hitting a vehicle behind it. At least two of the agents have weapons drawn, pointing at the car. The driver then pulls forward toward where the men are standing and turns sharply, driving over the roadway median.
The video has no sound, and it’s unclear when the shots were fired or if any of them said anything.
Kolasinski has said agents fired on Mendoza while the car was stopped and he drove away to flee the gunfire.
“He is doing everything he can to not run them over,” the attorney said of his client’s reaction during the stop.
Kolasinski also disputes DHS claims that there was a warrant out for his client’s arrest. He said Mendoza, who is engaged to a U.S. citizen, is a laborer and father of a 2-year-old daughter. He said he has been stopped for minor traffic infractions but has no criminal record in the U.S. and is not the subject of an arrest warrant in El Salvador, where he was acquitted of murder.
“We are prepared to fight them,” Kolasinski said of the allegations.
Neither DHS nor ICE have responded to Associated Press requests for comment on the lawyer’s claims.
The encounter was among a string of shootings during the Trump administration’s aggressive push to detain and deport immigrants in the country illegally, about which questions have been raised with federal immigration officials.
Kolasinski has said Mendoza, a dual citizen of El Salvador and Mexico, came to the U.S. in 2019 but said he did not know his client’s legal status nor how he arrived in the country. Federal officials say he is in the country illegally.
Mendoza underwent three surgeries for multiple gunshot wounds, his attorney said. Mendoza has difficulty speaking because he was shot in the jaw, but he insists he was never a gang member, Kolasinski said.
According to an Oct. 25, 2019, court document from a judge in El Salvador, Mendoza was acquitted after being accused of murder and ordered immediately released. He was 29 at the time. The document lists 10 others who were convicted of various crimes from aggravated robbery to murder, and mentions at least one of them was a member of the 18th Street Gang. But the document contains no mention of Mendoza belonging to a gang or being accused of engaging in gang activity.
Mendoza’s fiancée visited him in the hospital over the weekend and he was still in significant pain, Kolasinski said Monday.
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