by Thomas Breen | Aug 19, 2019 7:00 pm

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Posted to: Immigrants, La Voz Hispana, Legal Writes, Kimberly Square, The Hill

Balmer Gonzalez was closing up shop at his Colombian restaurant in the Hill when a group of strangers rolled down their car window and sprayed him and his family with bullets.

So Gonzalez pulled a handgun from his back pocket and returned fire. And ended up arrested.

It turned out the strangers were firing paintball bullets. But Gonzalez didn’t know that. He thought he and his wife and his daughter-in-law had just been attacked by real, live gunshots.

That encounter took place April 14. Gonzalez, the 49-year-old owner of La Esquina Del Mofongo at 236 Kimberly Ave. and of the adjacent Speedy Gonzalez check cashing store, has been haunted, and baffled, in the four months since.

Although he didn’t hit the car or the drivers, he was subsequently arrested by city police for alleged reckless endangerment and improper use of his firearm.

He’s been to court four times, and counting. He spoke of being weighed down by legal fees and hospital bills and the trauma of having seen his wife and stepdaughter lying on the sidewalk covered in what he thought was blood after what he believed at the time to be an attempted robbery of his check cashing store. He said he feels the police and the courts have turned him into a villain, just because he tried to protect his family and his business from an attack.

“I feel like the justice system, they treat me like a criminal,” he said during an emotional interview at his restaurant last Thursday. “In this case, I’m the victim. I respond to the attack.”

The cops saw it differently, according to the police report written at the time of Gonzalez’s arrest. The responding officers arrested and charged Gonzalez with two misdemeanor counts for firing his gun after an apparent threat to his family’s safety was already over, and in the direction of an occupied house. No one was hurt in the house, and no ballistics were found in the premises.

Police handcuffed Gonzalez that night, brought him to police headquarters, and put him in pre-trial lockup for several hours before releasing him. According to Gonzalez and his son, they also told him he needed to post $1,000 bail, but then rescinded that requirement several hours later.

“At this point, I don’t know what’s better,” Gonzalez said about whether he feels safer with or without his legal, registered firearm, which police have held onto since his April 14 arrest.

One thing he does know: He hasn’t been able to close up shop since then, out of a visceral fear that the drive-by shooters will return. He has left that task duty to his employees.

He and his family, who currently live in Norwalk, had been contemplating a move to the Elm City to be closer to their businesses, which include a West Haven and a Fair Haven cash-checking store. Now they’ve decided they won’t be moving to New Haven anytime soon.

“We Feel Alone”

Born in Colombia, Gonzalez has lived and worked in the United States for the past two decades. He has run the Kimberly check cashing store for upwards of 15 years, and the Colombian restaurant for the past six. He sees himself as a hard-working immigrant who has been able to realize a major part of the American dream: running one’s own business, being one’s own boss.

Around five years ago, he purchased a gun. His first weapon. To protect himself, and his family, from anyone who might try to rob his check cashing store.

He had never used his weapon before Sunday, April 14, he told the Independent. In fact, he almost never kept the gun on his person.

Earlier that Sunday, his son told him about a shooting that took place elsewhere in the neighborhood earlier that day. He said he took his gun, a Springfield XD40 handgun, from its usual safe keeping place in a back office and put it in his back pocket.

Later that night, at around 8:30, he, his son David, his wife, and his daughter-in-law went outside to close up shop.

He was pulling down the sliding metal grade to cover the windows and front door of his restaurant, he remembered, when the traffic light at the corner of Kimberly Avenue and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard changed from red to green.

At that moment, he said, someone rolled down a window in a car parked at the stoplight and pointed a gun out at the window.

“When the light change,” he said, “he started shooting. I saw everybody running. My wife fell down. My daughter-in-law was bleeding.”

And so Gonzalez pulled his gun out of his pocket. “I respond to them.”

His first intention, he said, was not to shoot at the people in the car, out of fear that he might kill them. Instead, he aimed for the tires. He missed, and the car got away. He didn’t realize that the drive-by shooter was firing paintballs, and not real bullets.

“That is not the problem,” he said. “The problem came in later.”

David called the police, who arrived within minutes. He said that he and his family were hiding in the back of the store because they were afraid that the shooter would come back to try to rob the check cashing store.

Balmer said that when the police arrived, they treated him with consideration and respect. They didn’t blame him for responding to the attack with gunfire of his own.

They were the ones who informed him that the shooter had used a paintball gun. They called an ambulance, which took his wife and daughter-in-law to the hospital, and they investigated the scene.

They later told him that they wanted to take him to police headquarters to listen to his story about what happened that night. Balmer agreed, thinking that they just wanted to hear his testimony.

At the station, police told him he would be held in custody. Balmer said he didn’t understand what that word meant. “They said, ‘You have the right to speak with us or when the lawyer is with you.” Balmer chose to wait for his lawyer. And so he was sent to lock up, and spent two hours behind bars.

“I have the feeling they’re cheating me,” he said. “And really they say something, and they do something different.” At first, he said, the police told him he had to pay $1,000 in bail to get out of pre-trial detention.

When David got to the station with the money, he said, the police said he didn’t have to pay bail after all, and told him instead he would have to go to court on Monday.

“At this point, I went four times to the court,” he said. “And the judge don’t make a decision. And I’m paying a lawyer. And the police take my gun and my permit, and I feel really unsafe, because at this point, the police are not protecting us in case someone want to come and take a revenge or make a robbery.”

He said his lawyer has applied for a diversionary program around gun safety that, if Gonzalez completes, would lead to his charges being dropped.

For the past four months, he has been in and out of court. He and his family have suffered from nightmares about the shooting, and have worried that someone will come back to the store to rob them, he said. He doesn’t close up out of fear of being attacked. His businesses’ reputations have taken a hit, he said, because people know that he was arrested.

“We regret calling the police,” David said.

“I work hard to be successful,” Balmer said. “But when this happen, what’s going on? You are doing something right ,and you’re trying to do the best. Why some stupid people came to your business and shoot you? What happened if my daughter-in-law lost her eye? What happened if they come with a real live bullet and they kill us in the future?”

“Thank God I didn’t hit them,” he continued as he thought back to that Sunday night. He never wanted to kill anyone, and was only acting out of self-defense. But now, he and his family feel like they’ve been misled and mistreated. The paintballers were never arrested, as far as he knows, while he was.

“We feel alone,” he said.

From The Police Report

Gonzalez’s account aligns closely with the official narrative of his arrest, as described in Officer Jeremy Mastroianni’s arrest report, written at 10:39 p.m. on April 14.

According to the police report, city Sgt. Chris Cameron and Officers Lavorgna, Castellano, Calderon, and Mastroianni responded to the front of Speedy Gonzalez Check Cashing at around 8:39 p.m. on April 14. “A Shotspotter activation showed five rounds were shot in front of this location,” he wrote.

Upon their arrival, four people in front of the store flagged down the officers, “saying they were shot.” One was “bleeding from her right cheek” while another was holding her right shoulder.

“Both parties were crying hysterically and appeared to be in serious pain.

“I then realized both subjects had been shot with paintballs not bullets.”

Balmer Gonzalez, Mastroianni wrote, had been shot in the stomach and both of his legs.

After officers called for an ambulance, Balmer told police that he was closing the check cashing business when “a dark colored sedan drove by them on Kimberly Avenue, firing what they thought were real firearms at them.

“I also observed a large amount of exploded light blue or white colored paintballs all over the sidewalk and the side of building they were standing in front of.”

A witness approached the officer, and told him that, as he was stopped at a red light on Kimberly facing the Boulevard, he observed “a Hispanic male with a handgun running down the street firing multiple gunshots.” Mastroianni asked where this alleged shooter was, and the witness said he believed he had left the scene prior to the police’s arrival.

But Balmer Gonzalez soon informed police that it was in fact he who had been shooting at the car. Mastroianni asked Gonzalez if he had a firearm, “and he stated he did and patted his right jacket pocket. I asked if he shot the firearm during the incident and he stated he shot at the car as it was fleeing the scene.”

Mastronianni removed the black Springfield XD40 handgun from Gonzalez’s right jacket pocked, removed the magazine, ejected a round from one of the chambers, and locked the slide in the back position. He then put the firearm, the magazine, and the ejected round in the trunk of Officer Castellano’s cruiser.

Gonzalez provided the officer with his state pistol permit, which Mastroianni found to be valid. “Officers on scene located five shell casings on the sidewalk at the corner of Kimberly Avenue and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. Crime scene was set up and Sergeant Cameron notified the Investigative Services Union. A warrant check for Balmer revealed negative results.

“Balmer was then placed in handcuffs in the rear of my police cruiser,” Mastroianni wrote. His wife and step-daughter were transported by ambulance to Saint Raphael’s Hospital for their paintball injuries.

Officer Lavorgna said that he spoke with the Gonzalezes, who told him “they thought they were being shot at with real bullets and feared for their lives. No parties on scene were able to identify the subjects shooting the paintballs nor were they able to further describe the fleeing vehicle.”

The officers found that the camera in front of Speedy Gonzalez Check Cashing wasn’t working, and that the cameras at the Mobil Gas Station across the street were “not able to be accessed because the owner was on vacation.

“From the direction Balmer was shooting in,” the officer continued, “we believed the residence located at 228 Kimberly Avenue may have been struck with bullets. Officer Castellano spoke to all parties inside the house and stated no one was injured and he was unable to locate any ballistic evidence at that time.

“Due to the fact Balmer shot at the vehicle as it fled the scene after the threat appeared to be over, as well as the fact there were multiple occupied residents in the direction he was firing, Balmer was arrested and charged with Reckless Endangerment 1st Degree (53a-63) and Unlawful Discharge of a Firearm (53-203).”

Mastronianni wrote that he and Lavorgna transported Balmer Gonzalez to the police department’s headquarters at 1 Union Ave.

“Balmer kept stating how he was trying to protect his family because he believed they were being robbed,” Mastroianno wrote. “He said he believed they were being robbed because he owned Speedy Gonzalez Check Cashing, which meant he was always in possession of large amounts of cash. He also repeatedly stated how he thought his family was being shot with real guns when he heard the loud noises and saw his [redacted] fall to the ground and start bleeding.

“Upon arrival at the New Haven Police Department, Balmer requested the presence of an attorney prior to speaking to Detectives Conklin and Criscuolo so he was brought to the detention facility for processing.”

In a heavily underlined and annotated copy of the police report that Balmer shared with the Independent, the restaurant owner wrote at the bottom of the report: “Shot at car not at occupants Didn’t know about paintball.”