Austin Police Department releases video of officer-involved shootings following ‘road rage incident’
Authorities in Austin have released video showing the moment officers gunned down a Texas father in front of his girlfriend and young child shortly after a “road rage incident” with an off-duty cop earlier this year.
Clips made public on Wednesday include perspectives from the cruiser dashcam, police body cameras, bystander cellphone footage and surveillance video. They each captured portions of a pair of shootings, the first of which occurred shortly after midnight on Jan. 5.
While the compilation of footage does not capture the initial exchange between 27-year-old Alex Gonzales and Officer Gabriel Gutierrez — who was not working and driving a personal vehicle at the time — security video from a nearby apartment complex appeared to show the cars stopped side by side right before the first round of gunfire erupted.
In a 911 call made just seconds later, Gutierrez told dispatchers that Gonzales had cut him off and pointed a gun in his direction, prompting the off-duty cop to open fire, KXAN reported.
Responding officers arrived on the scene around 12:30 a.m. In video captured around that time, Gonzales’ girlfriend can be seen laying on the ground outside the vehicle. She’d been in the back seat with their 2-month-old baby before the shots were fired.
Dash and bodycam videos then show Gonzales slowly making his way to the far side of the car, toward his loved ones.
“He walks to the other side of the vehicle where his girlfriend and the mother of his child is lying on the ground, wounded, to check on her,” Gonzales’ family attorney Scott Hendler told the news station. “She asks him to check on the baby. He then opens the back door to look in and leans in to check on the baby, and that’s when he’s shot.”
Gonzales’ girlfriend survived her wounds and their baby was not injured in the shooting.
Hendler said that Gonzales was “clearly wounded” at the time, noting Gutierrez, who previously told dispatchers the driver had been shot, seemed to be aware of that.
In the moments before responding Officer Luis Serrato fires off 10 shots at Gonzales, law enforcement can be heard repeatedly telling him “Don’t reach!” as he leaned into his vehicle.
Authorities said they later found a gun in Gonzales’ car, but Hendler said at no point in any of the footage did Gonzales appear to be armed.
“At no time in any of the videos is he seen brandishing the weapon, let alone holding the weapon, so I think that what the public is going to see is going to be very upsetting,” he told the news station.
Gutierrez is a five-year veteran of the force while Serrato has been with the department for two years, police said. Both officers have been on administrative leave since the pair of shootings, both of which are being individually investigated by the Austin Police Department.
