Lawyers for Oscar Belgal, the man wounded by a federal immigration officer while driving with his young son in New York, said in a court filing Wednesday that the agent who shot him never identified himself before running up to the car, smashing one of its windows and firing several shots into the vehicle. The account, reported by The Associated Press, contradicts the version given by the Department of Homeland Security, which says officers opened fire only after Belgal rammed two government vehicles and “accelerated toward other officers.”
The Legal Aid Society, in a petition filed in Brooklyn federal court seeking Belgal’s release, said he had picked up his son from school on October 8 and was stopped in front of a fire hydrant, looking for a parking spot, when “an anonymous, masked man” rushed the vehicle with his gun drawn, followed by other masked men with guns, the AP reported.
“The men did not identify themselves, show any documents or otherwise communicate with Oscar in any substantive way,” Belgal’s lawyers wrote, according to the AP. “Instead, without identifying himself, the first man struck and shattered Oscar’s window and began firing a pistol into Oscar’s car while his son cowered in the back seat. One of those bullets struck Oscar in the neck, and he immediately began to bleed.” Belgal did not learn the men were ICE officers until he woke later in the hospital, his lawyers said.
New York City police security-camera footage released by the department last week captures part of the encounter but does not conclusively resolve the dispute, the AP reported.
The video shows a man in a sweatshirt and a red hat running up to the car with his gun pointed at Belgal, then using the barrel of the gun to bash the driver’s-side window, which shatters on the second blow. A second officer comes alongside and draws his gun, and Belgal pulls into the street, away from the two officers, before the car moves out of the camera’s view with the officer in the red hat in pursuit. What happened next was not captured, but the chase ended moments later with Belgal’s damaged car against a concrete barrier, bullet holes in its windshield and rear window. Bystander video and NYPD body-camera footage show officers handcuffing Belgal and tending to a wound to his neck as he sat on the pavement; NYPD officers took him to a hospital.
DHS and ICE have described the shooting as a response to danger.
At a news conference, Marcos Charles, who leads ICE’s enforcement and removal operations, said Belgal refused orders to exit his vehicle and then accelerated and smashed into two government vehicles as officers tried to block him from driving away, the AP reported. DHS officials have maintained that officers fired because they believed their lives were in danger. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said officers did not know a child was in the car and has blamed Belgal for putting his son’s life in danger.
Charles has said Belgal was struck “superficially” in the neck — a characterization that conflicts with his lawyers’ statement that a bullet remains lodged in his body. ICE has described Belgal as an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic with a record that it says includes theft and grand larceny, and has alleged he is a gang member and was a target of Homeland Security Investigations.
DHS did not comment Wednesday on the claims by Belgal’s lawyers, saying the incident remains under investigation, the AP reported.
Belgal’s lawyers say he remains held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he has not yet received surgery to remove the bullet in his neck. They say he has lost sensation on the left side of his face and has impaired hearing. “Mr. Belgal’s detention was unlawful from its inception,” his attorneys, Perry McAninch and Elyssa Williams, said in a statement the AP reported. “ICE officers shot him in the neck in front of his five-year-old son, failed to provide him with immediate medical assistance, and now continue to hold him in a facility notorious for medical neglect.”
DHS referred questions about Belgal’s medical care to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs the jail. That agency declined to comment, citing “privacy, safety, and security reasons,” but said it generally “does not deny any inmate necessary medical treatment or basic necessities,” according to the AP.
The shooting occurred around 4 p.m. on Thursday, October 8, in Marble Hill, a sliver of Manhattan attached to the Bronx, and set off protests outside the hospital where Belgal was taken. In the days afterward, his lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition challenging his detention, saying they had been unable to locate him for nearly a day after he was moved from the hospital; a federal judge ordered the government to hold him only in New York or New Jersey, as reported by Courthouse News. The Wednesday filing seeking his release is the latest step in that litigation.
The dispute now rests with the courts and an open investigation. DHS has not addressed the specific allegations in the lawyers’ filing, pointing to the ongoing inquiry, and no court has ruled on the competing accounts of how Belgal came to be shot in front of his son. CTN will report further developments as they are confirmed.
https://ctninfo.com/lawyers-say-ice-…med-its-vehicles/
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