By Renee Hickman and Brad Brooks
CHICAGO (Reuters) -Police records and witness accounts from a Chicago suburb where a man was fatally shot by a federal immigration enforcement agent earlier this month complicate the picture of the event presented by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which said the agent fired his weapon after the man drove his vehicle toward agents.
Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, 38, was pulled over and eventually shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Franklin Park, Illinois on September 12, just after dropping off his two children at Passow Elementary School and Small World Learning Center, a daycare located blocks away from the incident.
In the shooting incident, the agent fired his weapon and Villegas Gonzalez crashed his car into a delivery truck.
Bodycam footage, which Reuters obtained on Tuesday, captures an interview with the truck driver, named in police records as Josue Hernandez-Rodriguez.
“He was trying to escape from them,” Hernandez-Rodriguez said.
In multiple statements, DHS has said the agent, who has not been identified, responded with lethal force because he was “fearing for his own life.” But in bodycam footage, the agent, in a bullet-resistant police vest and torn jeans, described his injuries as “nothing major.”
The shooting has been the most violent case in a wave of aggressive ICE actions taken as part of the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” a surge in immigration enforcement in the Chicago area that began earlier this month. The administration said the operation was necessary because of city and state “sanctuary” laws that limit local police cooperation with federal authorities.
DHS said in a statement on September 12 after the incident its agent fatally shot Villegas Gonzalez, whom the agency said was in the U.S. illegally, during a vehicle stop to arrest him.
“He refused to follow law enforcement’s commands and drove his car at law enforcement officers,” the statement said. “One of the ICE officers was hit by the car and dragged a significant distance. Fearing for his own life, the officer fired his weapon.”
A trove of documents and bodycam footage obtained by Reuters as part of a public records request, as well as surveillance and bystander video, paints a more complex account.
Franklin Park Police Officer Daniel Velazquez’s bodycam shows him pulling up to the scene as medics in neon green vests worked to revive a shirtless and limp Villegas Gonzalez.
Velazquez asked the ICE agents about their injuries.
“I got a cut,” the agent in the torn jeans responded, motioning toward his bloodied knee. He also described lacerations on a hand and elbow. “Nothing major,” he said.
Villegas Gonzalez was then taken into a waiting ambulance, as his right arm, covered in blood, hung off the stretcher. A pool of blood was left behind on the asphalt.
About three hours after police responded to a 911 call reporting shots fired, police were notified that Villegas Gonzalez was dead, records show.
An ambulance also arrived for the ICE agents, but neither was seen in bodycam footage receiving treatment.
“I think we’re good, man. I’m just shooken up,” the second agent said.
Surveillance footage from a nearby nail salon obtained earlier by CBS News showed the passenger side of Villegas Gonzalez’s silver sedan.
The two agents could be seen leaning into his car windows, one reaching in, after which the car backed up and drove off. The agent on the driver’s side was not visible after the car pulled away.
David Katzin, superintendent of Franklin Park School District 84, which includes Passow Elementary, confirmed on Monday one of Villegas Gonzalez’s children was in attendance on the day of the shooting.
The injured ICE agent told Franklin Park police Villegas Gonzalez had “one minor at a daycare,” and another at an elementary school.
Villegas Gonzalez left his hometown of Irimbo, in Mexico’s Michoacan state, 18 years ago for the U.S. and worked as a cook in Chicago, his older brother Jorge Villegas Gonzalez told Reuters. He had custody of his two children, his brother said.
Both Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum have called for further investigations into the ICE agents’ tactics.
“We don’t know all the circumstances because ICE won’t give it to us,” Pritzker said in a press interview on Tuesday.
It was unclear whether the ICE agents would be subject to an internal review process.
Bodycam footage captured Franklin Park Police Chief Michael Witz saying his department would not investigate a federal officer.
“Whether there’s any meaningful oversight at DHS of ICE agents at this point is a very troubling question,” said Lucas Guttentag, a professor and immigration law expert at Stanford University.
(Reporting by Renee Hickman in Chicago and Brad Brooks in Colorado, additional reporting by Emily Schmall, editing by Emily Schmall and Chris Reese)
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