STAGE A CONFRONTATION, SHOOT SOMEONE: GO HOME

By Juan Montoya
As someone who has been the subject of vigorous prosecution from the Brownsville Police Department for even minimal offenses, it strikes me as most unusual to see the treatment afforded to the chief city health inspector Willie Gonzalez.
You remember him. He's the man identified all over the cybersphere as the man who shot a man and a woman at the Toucan Lounge last week after he felt threatened when he exited the watering hole after the 2 a.m. closing time.
News has reached us that he had heard that Gonzalez was not assaulted as he left the bar, but rather had gone into Toucan's in search of his girlfriend, who he had been told was partying in the company of another boyfriend.
After he confronted them and shot them, he then reportedly drove to the police station and turned himself in. The cops let him go home after he gave them his version of the events.
Isn't that rich.
Here's a guy who has been drinking. Right? As cops figure when they arrest people coming out of bars, why else would he be there? People are arrested on flimsier excuses that that. Then, after he provoked the incident and felt threatened, he didn't call the cops. Instead, he reached into the glove compartment of the car, pulled out the handgun he had taken with him for just such an event, and started firing away hitting the man and woman.
Then, it gets curiouser.
In his (sober or panicked) ) state, he has the presence of mind to drive all the way from Toucan's to the PD on Jackson Street and turn himself in.
If he had taken the gun there in anticipation of confronting the traitorous woman and her consort, doesn't that smack of premeditated attempted manslaughter?
Was he driving under the influence? Was he given a sobriety test before he was let go? Did he call his mother Lydia to run interference for him with her former co-workers like city manager Charlie Cabler and the rest of the gang? Or did he call Cabler himself.
Then, Gonzalez's name wasn't even been divulged to the newspaper or to the public. He wasn't even booked either for the shootings, the possession of a reportedly unregistered handgun, or even for public intoxication. In fact, police have withheld the report or the names of the participants on the incident from the news media.
Lydia Gonzalez, his mother, was the long-time Director of Human Resources (personnel), and his father, Willie Sr., was a respected employee and an indefatigable fighter for La Raza and human rights.
Still, as others have pointed out, the treatment afforded Willie Jr. smacks of the same kind of treatment afforded at the county to Aurora De la Garza's son Joey, a thief, or more recently, the daughter of Asst. DA Peter Gilman, whose wife also works for the DA and whose daughter's boss just happens to be, also, Aurorita.
As far as we have been able to ascertain, Gonzalez was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation (ahem!) of the "incident."
"The last time I was arrested for PI I was walking down the sidewalk minding my own business and just blocks from home," said one of our friends. "I didn't shoot anybody. I had walked for more than a mile already without incident, but a young cop just pulled over and took me in. Now I owe the city $250. They even put my picture on their public records. This guy shot two people after preparing a gun for a confrontation and they let him go because of who he is and who he works for. What gives?"