A 42-year-old man has been ordered detained after prosecutors said he shot another man in front of the victim’s fiancée and two young children because the family’s car horn beeped as he walked past.
Paul Garcia was arrested this week and charged with attempted first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated discharge of a firearm toward an occupied vehicle.
The shooting occurred around 9 p.m. on June 21 in the 9700 block of South Commercial Avenue. Prosecutors said the victim had just left Calumet Beach with his fiancée and their 4-year-old children when they stopped at a corner store so she could buy an energy drink.
As she walked toward the store, the key fob for their vehicle was in the woman’s pocket and automatically beeped the horn while Garcia was passing by, prosecutors said. Garcia became “belligerent,” demanding to know why the family was beeping at him, a detention petition said.
The victim exited the vehicle to explain, but Garcia continued his aggressive behavior, and the victim noticed Garcia had a revolver, according to prosecutors. They said Garcia confronted the fiancée inside the store and told her something to the effect of, “I don’t want to kill your husband, but if I have to…” She pleaded with him, saying their children were in the car.
As the victim began to call police, Garcia walked outside and got in his face, then pulled the revolver and pointed it at him, prosecutors said. Garcia walked away, but other people then approached the father, and one threw a beer bottle at the family’s car. At that point, Garcia allegedly turned back around, opened fire, and shot the father twice in the back of the neck and head.
The victim’s children reportedly cried out, “Daddy’s dead, he fell down, seen blood,” prosecutors wrote in the detention filing. Police found bullet holes in the family’s car, including one just below the rear door where the children were sitting, as well as in two other cars on the block.
Nearly the entire confrontation was captured on security cameras, prosecutors said. The father survived his injuries and suffered no fractures, and “nothing vital” was hit, according to the petition.
Garcia, who has a prior conviction for pointing a gun at someone, was detained by Judge James Costello.
Original reporting you’ll see nowhere else, paid for by our readers. Click here to support our work.
