An Ontario man who confronted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers as they were engaged in a field operation near his home was shot when one of the federal agents perceived him to have used his vehicle in an aggressive and potentially lethal maneuver to obstruct them.
Carlos Jimenez, 24, had left the trailer in which he resides within the Country Meadows Mobile Home Park, located at 1855 East Riverside Drive at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday October 30 in hid Lexus RX350. He was due to be at work in Baldwin Park at 8 a.m. Giving himself an hour-and-a-half to make the 26-mile commute in weekday morning rush hour traffic, as he routinely did, was a reasonable allotment he calculated, barring a disastrous accident and back-up on 60, 71, 57 or 10 freeways.
Country Meadows is situated on the northwest corner of Riverside Drive and Vineyard Avenue. After exiting the residential park and while traveling on Vineyard Avenue, Jimenez observed, less than two blocks north of Riverside Drive, a Department of Immigration vehicle had stopped a Honda Accord going south on Vineyard Avenue and a team of agents – consisting of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, an enforcement and removal operations deportation officer and two U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Field Operations officers – was engaging with the Honda’s three occupants.
The Customs Enforcement officer was was speaking with the driver of the Honda on the driver’s side of the stopped vehicle when Jimenez pulled up in his Lexus RX350.
There is a discrepancy between what Jimenez maintains was said during the ensuing exchange and what the Customs Enforcement officer says was said.
According to Jimenez, he “asked” the officers to be careful, telling them they were practically next to a school bus stop, and children would be their momentarily. At that point, according to Jimenez, one of the other three officers – and he was not clear on whether it was the removal operations deportation officer or one of the two U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Field Operations officers, unholstered his gun and approached him, prompting him to shout, or say loudly, “Are you really going to shoot an American citizen?”
At that point, Jimenez said, he pulled forward.
According to federal agents and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Jimenez’s account omits crucial details.
While Jimenez was “engaged in a verbal altercation with the officers at the vehicle stop,” another officer approached with his firearm and told Jimenez to leave, before holstering his firearm and arming himself with his pepper spray. Jimenez was ordered to leave the area. Though Jimenez at that point drove his Lexus northward and away from the Honda and the officers as if he was leaving, he abruptly stopped and turned the car’s wheels to “rapidly” accelerate backwards toward the officers and the stationary Honda, according to the document filed with the court by federal prosecutors. The officer who had been verbally engaged with the occupants of the Honda’s stated he believed Jimenez’s Lexus would hit him and the Honda. While Jimenez in the Lexus RX350 was yet accelerating backward in the direction of a Border Patrol agent identified in the complaint as “Officer N.J.” and the Honda Accord, one of the officers fired his gun at Jimenez, hitting him in the shoulder, according to the court document.
There is a lack of clarity as to how many shots were fired. According to one document, the incident involved the firing of a single bullet. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting on Thursday, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, used the plural term “shots” in describing what had occurred.
The documents drafted by prosecutors and the affidavits provided by agents form the basis of a charge filed against Jimenez today, Friday, November 1 in Riverside Federal Court, specifying assault on a federal officer.
Jimenez fled the scene after the confrontation and his shooting, according to one of the documents filed in conjunction with the charge. “Jimenez drove away from the scene and later checked himself into a hospital,” one of the affidavits states. “After Jimenez was medically cleared and released from the hospital, Jimenez was taken into HSI [Department of Homeland Security Investigations] custody.”
It was during his hearing on October 31 that Jimenez articulated his version of events.
The court granted Jimenez, in whose shoulder a bullet is yet lodged, with a conditional release, which includes wearing an ankle monitor, upon his posting of a bond. He is represented by attorneys Cynthia Santiago and Robert Simon.