A Milwaukee man who filed a civil rights lawsuit over his arrests for openly carrying a gun into stores has been charged with fatally shooting one man and wounding another outside his south side home over the weekend.
After the shooting, Jesus C. Gonzalez immediately called 911 to report the incident. He was wearing his empty holster as he surrendered to police when they arrived moments later, according to a criminal complaint. His gun was sitting nearby.
Gonzalez, 23, was charged Thursday with first-degree intentional homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide in the death of Danny John and the wounding of his nephew, Jered Corn. Gonzalez is being held at the Milwaukee County Jail on $100,000 bail, according to jail and court records.
Coincidentally, a federal judge had dismissed his civil suit Tuesday.
According to the criminal complaint:
Early Sunday, John, 29, and Corn, 21, were at Mamie's tavern at S. Shea and National avenues. They agreed to go to a friend's house near the bar. Corn began walking there, while John went to get his car parked nearby. They had agreed to meet at the friend's house.
Corn told police that as he left the parking lot he saw Gonzalez pointing a gun at him on the sidewalk. He said Gonzalez ordered him to back up, which he did for several feet before Gonzalez shot him. Corn said he recalled John's car had arrived in the parking lot, and then sped away, but he couldn't remember more. Corn was shot in the throat and paralyzed.
The complaint does not include a post-interrogation statement from Gonzalez but indicates that he called police about 12:30 a.m. to report that "I just had two individuals try to assault me when I was going outside to move my car." He tells the dispatcher that he shot out the window of a car, and one of the men fell down, but he wasn't sure whether he hit either or both of the men, and that he ran after firing the shots.
When the dispatcher asked if the men had a gun, Gonzalez replies, "I don't know what they had, but they must have thought that I was not armed."
Upon arrival, police found Gonzalez standing outside with his hands up, wearing a black nylon gun holster on his side. His 9mm semiautomatic was sitting on top of a stack of boxes inside his house, with the slide pulled back exposing the empty chamber.
Police found John lying on the sidewalk around the corner, at 3400 W. National Ave., in front of his black Honda Civic, which was idling and had gunshots to the windshield. A cell phone was outside the driver's door, ringing.
A relative told police she had been talking to John by phone around the time of the shooting when she heard him having an argument, telling someone to leave his windows alone. She said she heard the other voice say a repeated expletive and "I'm going to back up in there" before the call became muffled and then was disconnected.
Corn told police neither he nor John had guns that night and had not had an altercation with Gonzalez.
Police officials recovered seven casings they determined were likely fired from Gonzalez's gun, which his brother told police he always wears when he leaves the house.
Last year, Gonzalez filed a federal lawsuit challenging the common practice of police arresting people who openly carry holstered guns in public after his arrests on disorderly conduct charges at a Menard's in West Milwaukee in 2008 and at a Wal-Mart in Chilton in April 2009. Prosecutor declined to bring charges in both cases.
A week later, Attorney General J.B.Van Hollen issued an advisory stating that so-called open carry, by itself, was not cause for a charge of disorderly conduct, and in the year since, open carry advocates have held picnics and other public events around the state promoting the practice.
Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn quickly responded to the Van Hollen advisory, saying Milwaukee officers would certainly still be questioning anyone seen openly carrying a gun in the city.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman dismissed Gonzalez's civil rights complaint, saying police officers indeed had probable cause to arrest him in each instance, and that even if they had not, the officers had qualified immunity from claims such as the one Gonzalez had filed. He had alleged privacy and due process violations.
Adelman also rejected Gonzalez's claim that because police in West Milwaukee and Chilton held his gun for months before returning it, they violated his rights against illegal search and seizure.
His order may likely anger open carry proponents.
"No reasonable person would dispute that walking into a retail store openly carrying a firearm is highly disruptive conduct which is virtually certain to create a disturbance.
"This is so because when employees and shoppers in retail stores see a person carrying a lethal weapon, they are likely to be frightened and possibly even panicky. Many employees and shoppers are likely to think that the person with the gun is either deranged or about to commit a felony or both.
"Further, it is almost certain that someone will call the police. And when police respond to a 'man with a gun' call, they have no idea what the armed individual's intentions are. The volatility inherent in such a situation could easily lead to someone being seriously injured or killed," Adelman wrote.
In January, two men and the group Wisconsin Carry, Inc., filed another federal lawsuit, challenging a Wisconsin law that restricts open carry within 1,000 feet of a school. That case is pending before Chief U.S. District Judge Charles N. Clevert Jr.
