Things you need to know about the shooters and victims at the Dallas Ice Detention Center
New details have been revealed about the suspects and victims of the Dallas Ice Detention Center shooting. At least one of the victims was a Mexican national.
- A gunman fired at the Dallas Ice Field office, killing one detainee and wounding two others.
- The suspect, who later died of suicide, reportedly targeted ice agents rather than detainees.
- Garcia’s wife unconsciously expressed her dissatisfaction with his treatment as she remains bound in hospital.
DALLAS – The last time Stephanie Gofeney spoke to her husband, she was encouraged by the excitement in his voice. He had gone home.
Miguel Angel Garcia Medina, 31, was expected to be remanded to immigration and customs enforcement from the Tarrant County Jail in Arlington, Texas. However, the couple hatched plans to bring them together, even if the Trump administration stepped up deportation. Garcia began a visa process for a permanent stay in the United States, married Gopheny and raised four children together with her fifth baby.
“He was happy,” Gauffeny said in a September 23 interview with USA Today on the phone. “He knew he was going to end up with ice, but we had plans to keep him in the US.”
The plan collapsed the next day. On September 24th, Garcia was just transported from Arlington to the Dallas Ice Field Office, when a gunman fired into the building, and a van fired with an 8mm bolt-action rifle, killing one detainee and seriously injured Garcia.
Garcia, 31, was one of three detainees injured or killed that day.
The next time Gofenny saw him, on September 24th, Garcia was in the hospital bed at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.
His face was swollen. The tube meandered through his throat. Staples crossed his head and closed the wound. Dry blood held back his face, neck and bed sheet. His arms were tied to the bed, his legs were tied together at his ankles. He was unconscious.
“It was terrible to see him like that,” she said.
Who was the victim of the shooting at the Dallas Ice Field Office?
A senior office of the Homeland Security Agency, speaking about conditions of anonymity, has identified two other victims as Jose Andres Baudon Molina of Venezuela. Nolan Guzman Fuentes of El Salvador.
Records of a Dallas County Medical Examiner show the death of 37-year-old Guzman Falentes. Authorities ruled his death as murder.
All three men had no proper documentation in the country and had criminal records ranging from traffic crimes to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Garcia was arrested on August 8 for driving after being affected and spent six weeks at the Tarrant County Jail in Arlington, Texas.
Local supporters have condemned the lack of information about immigrant victims.
Federal authorities said suspect Joshua Yahn, 29, ran around the area near the facility around 3am on Sept. 24, and saw the rudder perched on a truck. He then uses a ladder to climb onto the roof in the two-storey building behind the facility, they said.
Around 6:30am, Yarn began firing at the facility, crashing into the building and sending circles into a transport van filled with at least 10 detainees. Surveillance video obtained by local television media shows detainees, hands and feet tied together, surged into the facility from the van during a barrage of gunfires.
At a press conference on September 25, federal officials said evidence found to be linked to gunmen showed Yarn targeting ice agents rather than detainees. Some ice and ATF agents ran into the van under the fire to retrieve the injured detainees, they said.
“They were bringing life to help pull detainees away from the transport van and lead them to safety,” said Marcos Charles, acting executive associate director of Ice’s execution and removal business. “They are heroes.”
Garcia sought legal status with our family
Garcia was one of the detainees who were hit by a van, and his hands and feet were tied together. Approximately eight bullets were torn apart by him, hitting his shoulder, stomach, tailbone and neck, causing him to suffer a massive amount of stroke. He was eventually drawn from the van and rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Eric Cedillo, national legal counsel for the United Latin American Citizens’ Federation, said despite his DUI violations, Garcia was trying to obtain permanent residency in the “right” way through immigration lawsuits, and was brought to the United States as a teenager.
He said Gopheny, a US citizen, sponsored him for the first approved I-130 visa.
“He’s been doing all the right things here for 20 years,” said Cedillo, who advises his family.
He added: “It can be bad or bad in any demographic. He wasn’t one of the bad things. It’s a shame what happened to him and the other victims in this incredibly tragic event.”
Garcia was born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and was brought to the United States when he was 13 with his three brothers and settled in Arlington, Texas, Gopheny said.
The two met during their freshmen at Sam Houston High School and began dating a few years after high school. They got married in 2016. Garcia helped her two daughters, Gopheny, already raised. The pair totaled two girls, ages 8-14 and one 3-year-old boy, Miguel Angel Garcia Jr.
Garcia was a stellar dad, and Gopheny is helping her 8-year-old daughter who has ruined the girl, attended the daddy daughter’s dance and dot Miguel Jr. with autism. He is a painter and contractor and the only bread winner of the family. In May they bought their first home: a modest three-bedroom, one-bathroom home.
Garcia was delighted in September that Gopheny was pregnant with another boy, she said.
“He wanted that second boy,” she said.
The DUI was his first crime, and other charges that avoided arrest fell later, Gauffeny said. They hoped his relationship with the community and his growing family would ensure he was deported.
“Our hope was that he was allowed to stay here with us,” she said.
Bondage at the hospital
On the morning of September 24th, Gopheny was woken up to news of a shooting at the Dallas Ice Field office. She knew he was going to be transferred to ice that morning, but she thought it was too coincidence for Garcia to get involved.
She was worried when he didn’t call. He then called to let her know about 2pm that Garcia had been shot dead at the facility and taken to Parkland. She rushed to the hospital with her sister and mother.
Gopheny said her husband had just been shot in the arm and thought he might wake up and recover. She was shocked by the horrifying scene that greeted her as she stepped into her hospital room. She began to cry.
Since then, Gauffeny said there have been few details about what happened that day. Hospital staff filled her with his injuries. He has had at least one operation and probably needs more.
But the person lying in bed with his swollen face and tubes, arms and legs tied to the bed, didn’t look like his husband, who recently helped put his child to bed every night, she said.
The family launched a GoFundMe page to offset some of the medical expenses. But it is an image of his arms and legs being bound, and it is the most difficult to sway, Gopheny said.
“They don’t respect him as a human being,” she said. “He can’t even move. He feels really unfair in the way he is being treated when he was (the victim) of a hate crime.”
X: Follow Jervis at @mrrjervis.
