'I never meant to kill,' Gomez-Garcia says

Accused shooter of cops testifies that he thought vests would stop bullets

Sue Lindsay, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 14, 2006 at midnight

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Accused cop killer Raul Gomez-Garcia told a Denver jury that he sought revenge by shooting two police officers but expected their bulletproof vests to keep them from being killed.

"I never meant to kill them," Gomez- Garcia said, taking the witness stand Wednesday in his own defense.

He demonstrated the two-handed stance he took while shooting at the backs of Denver police officers Donald "Donnie" Young and Jack Bishop.

Gomez-Garcia, 21, is on trial in Denver District Court for second-degree murder of Young and attempted first-degree murder of Bishop.

The two officers were shot in the back on May 8, 2005, as they worked security at an invitation-only baptismal party at the Salon Ocampo in west Denver.

Gomez-Garcia, who said he has no formal education and is nearly illiterate, told the jury through an interpreter that he was angry about being turned away from the party after he already had been inside with his common-law wife and her family.

He said he stepped outside to meet some other relatives and friends, but police barred him from returning, saying he needed an invitation.

"I told him he had already seen me, that I had been inside already," Gomez-Garcia said, referring to Young. "He said he didn't care."

Young also refused to let him get the invitation from his wife who was still inside the party waiting for him to return, he said.

"I felt bad," he said. "I kept telling him to let me get the invitation to prove to him that I already had been inside."

The two started arguing and swearing at each other.

"I called him f--- you and racist and things like those. He called me (expletive) Mexican."

Gomez-Garcia said he swore at Young again as the officer demanded to know what he had just said.

"He pushed me again and grabbed me by the arm and by the neck and pushed me over the railing," Gomez-Garcia said, demonstrating how he was held to the jury.

As they moved outside the hall, "he said he was going to call other cops so we could be arrested," Gomez-Garcia said.

He and the other three men left and wound up at a pool hall, where Gomez-Garcia said the others egged him on, asking what he was going to do about what had happened.

"They made fun of me so that made me more mad," he said. "So I told them I was going to come back and shoot the police officers," he said.

"They convinced me and I said, 'OK, let's go do that. Let's go fire shots at the police officers.' "

He returned to the hall with Leopoldo Rivas, who waited in a parked getaway car.

Gomez-Garcia said he told Rivas, "if they have bulletproof vests nothing will happen to them. Maybe a bruise or a mark, but that's all."

Gomez-Garcia said he believed all police officers wore bulletproof vests because his father, a drug dealer in Los Angeles, previously worked as a police officer in Mexico and told him it was "compulsory."

Gomez-Garcia said he had fired his .38-caliber gun at a bulletproof vest on a wall while he was living in Los Angeles and it had stopped the bullets.

He said he walked back into the club several times, waiting until no other patrons were near the officers. Then he shot.

Gomez-Garcia said he shot Bishop first, saw him fall, and then fired several shots at Young because he didn't fall down after the first shot.

"I never meant to kill them," he said. "I wanted to embarrass them just like they had embarrassed me."

Gomez-Garcia will finish his testimony today.

In other testimony Wednesday, agents who arrested Gomez-Garcia in Mexico said he wanted to know which one of the officers he had killed.

Informed that it was Young, the "bigger" officer, "He said in Spanish, 'Good, because that's the one that was was choking me. I'm glad it was him,' " said Jose Chavarria of the U.S. Marshals Service in Mexico City.

"His demeanor was that he was bragging about it. He didn't look sad."

Gomez-Garcia also wanted to know who had turned him in, Chavarria said.

"He said if it was Jaime, I'm gonna kill him," referring to Jaime Arana del Angel, who helped him flee to California.

But defense attorneys contend the Spanish phrase Gomez-Garcia used also would mean, "I'm going to kick his ass."

Chavarria said Gomez-Garcia was full of questions after he was arrested June 4, 2005, at a convenience store in Culiacan, Sinaloa.

"He asked a lot of questions," Chavarria said, as they drove to headquarters of the Mexican federal agents. "He kept talking. He never stopped."

Gomez-Garcia told officers "how he left Denver, which freeway he used, who went with him and what he did with the gun. He talked about a guy (Arana del Angel) who helped him get on the freeway because he didn't know how to get to L.A.," Chavarria said.

Gomez-Garcia told the officers he threw the murder weapon, which he described as a .380-caliber gun, in the desert on the way to California, Chavarria said.

Gomez-Garcia also was concerned about being sent back to the U.S., Chavarria said.

"He asked if he can plead guilty in Mexico and do time there so he could be close to his family," he said.

Mexican federal agent Oswaldo Iracheta-Lopez said Gomez-Garcia told them about being barred from going back to the party.

"He said he told police officers they were racist," Iracheta-Lopez said. "They got upset and (one officer) grabbed him by the neck. (Gomez-Garcia) was extremely upset. He went to his car, got a gun and shot him."

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