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Complaint outlines competing accounts of Austin ICE shooting that wounded Garces Perez
A federal criminal complaint says Wilber Rafael Garces Perez drove off during an ICE stop and struck an agent with his car’s side mirror before the agent fired. Perez told investigators the pursuing SUV hit his car and that an ICE officer shot him in the back.
A federal criminal complaint filed Monday lays out sharply different accounts of the Sept. 20 encounter in Austin in which an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, wounding him in the upper back.
The Department of Homeland Security filing alleges that Perez drove away from an attempted stop and that his car’s side-view mirror struck an ICE agent in the torso. It says that agent, identified in the document as “L.G.,” fired his pistol during the ensuing pursuit. The complaint’s account is an allegation, not a court finding.
According to the filing, ICE officers had located Perez’s blue Toyota near the Village Shopping Center around 12:20 p.m. One officer confirmed that an immigration judge had issued a final order of removal against him. The officers followed Perez, and one activated emergency lights. The complaint says the other officer blocked his car with an SUV before Perez stopped on the roadside.
An officer identified as “D.F.” was wearing a body camera, the complaint says. The recording captured an officer identifying himself as ICE and asking Perez to put the car in park and get out. Perez instead asked in Spanish whether he could move the car and park it, according to the filing. About a minute later, he drove away; the complaint alleges that his side-view mirror hit L.G. as the agent tried to avoid the vehicle.
The filing says the officers pursued Perez with lights and sirens through commercial and residential areas. D.F. told investigators he requested assistance from a state Department of Public Safety dispatcher, lost sight of L.G. and then switched off his body camera. When L.G. later reached him by phone, he said Perez had tried to hit him with the car and that he had fired his weapon, the complaint states.
Perez gave investigators a different account on the day of the shooting. He said a black SUV followed him without activating emergency lights and cut him off near State Highway 183 and Anderson Square, according to the filing. Perez acknowledged that he did not follow an order to get out of the car and drove away, but said the SUV hit his vehicle, spun it around and an ICE officer then fired through the rear passenger-side window. He said the bullet struck his upper back.
The complaint says Perez told investigators that after the shooting, an ICE agent removed the keys from the ignition, told him to remain in the car and said an ambulance was on the way.
The filing identifies the officers only by initials. It says only D.F. had a body-worn camera during the incident; the recording stopped after he lost sight of his partner. Perez’s attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, was contacted for comment.
The allegations arise from an ICE enforcement encounter that ended with an officer firing at a person in a vehicle on Austin-area roads. The complaint does not settle the conflicting accounts of how the shooting unfolded.