Court documents charging a DoorDash driver shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer rely on a secondhand phone call for the claim that he tried to hit the officer with his car.
Federal prosecutors charged Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan man, with assaulting, resisting and impeding a federal officer in a criminal complaint filed Monday in Austin. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth reported. An ICE officer shot him Sept. 20 while he was making a DoorDash delivery in North Austin.
The affidavit supporting the complaint identifies the two ICE officers only as L.G. and D.F. It includes no interview with L.G., the officer who fired, and instead relays what he told D.F. by phone after a car chase ended.
“During the call, L.G. told D.F. that GARCES had attempted to strike L.G. with his car and L.G. had fired his pistol,” the affidavit states.
According to the affidavit, L.G. did not have a body camera. The document says D.F. turned it off after he lost sight of L.G. and Garces Perez during the chase.
In an interview with an investigator after the shooting, Garces Perez said the chase ended when an SUV struck his car and caused it to spin around, according to the affidavit.
“After coming to a forced stop, GARCES recalled L.G. firing his pistol into the back-right window of GARCES’ car. GARCES was struck with a bullet in his upper back,” the affidavit reads.
A woman livestreaming on Facebook while driving captured the end of the chase and the shooting from a distance, CNN reported in an analysis of the footage.
“[A]round the moments when gunshots are heard, the agent doesn’t appear to be in the path of the blue car. Instead, the ICE agent is standing behind and to the side of Garces Perez’s vehicle,” the CNN report said.
The car moved forward slowly after the shots and quickly came to a stop, according to the report. Photos taken afterward show two bullet holes in its rear passenger-side window, the network said.
“The shooting video clearly shows he was behind the car as it was not moving,” David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, wrote on X.
“ICE agents are still apparently lying about people they shoot ‘attempting to strike them,’ despite there being video evidence refuting the claims. These people must be trained to lie,” Bier wrote in an earlier post.
The affidavit also alleges that officers first stopped Garces Perez before the chase, and that his side-view mirror struck L.G. in the torso as he drove away after ignoring requests to step out of the car.
The criminal complaint does not say who saw the alleged assault happen.
Two body camera stills printed beside the allegation show L.G. at the driver’s door with his hands on the car, but they do not show the mirror making contact.
“From this I can’t tell if he was actually hit, but either way, it should be obvious at this point that these amateurs should stop doing traffic stops, which even Tom Homan said are not necessary. They could’ve arrested him outside of his vehicle and chose not to,” Bier wrote about the images.
“Before he gets into the car, you can arrest him then. You can wait until the vehicle gets to its destination,” White House border czar Tom Homan said on Fox News in July, in a clip the White House posted on X.
D.F. watched a man walk out of a restaurant, recognized him as likely Garces Perez from an immigration photograph and then watched him drive off, the affidavit says.
“Then they again WAITED UNTIL HE DROVE OFF to arrest him, which led to the shooting. It’s deliberate,” Bier wrote.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson referred questions to the Justice Department, and an attorney for Garces Perez declined to immediately comment Tuesday, NBC 5 reported.
Garces Perez is set to appear in court in San Antonio on Wednesday, the Texas Tribune reported. A detention hearing in the criminal case is scheduled for Friday, according to KCBY.
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