Background: The Stop n Shop located at 49 Northeast 2nd Ave in Miami, Florida (Google Maps). Inset: Gonzalo Gonzalez (Miami Police Department).
A man is accused of pulling a gun on a clerk at a Miami deli, threatening responding police officers and claiming he was made “to kill Venezuelans.”
Gonzalo Gonzalez, 57, stands charged with improper exhibition of a firearm as well as aggravated assault with intent to commit a felony, according to Miami-Dade County jail records. He was arrested and booked into the county jail on Saturday.
Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.
According to the Miami Police Department, a man entered the Stop n Shop deli located at 49 Northeast 2nd Ave and approached the counter that day, per an arrest report reviewed by Law&Crime. This man then allegedly placed a backpack on the store”s counter and asked the store clerk for a vape.
According to the store clerk, the man — later identified as Gonzalez — “goes into the backpack, brandished a black firearm” — believed to be a Glock — “and racked the slide.” There was at least one other person in the store, a woman who told investigators that she was “in fear and immediately dropped to the floor” behind the store’s counter upon seeing the gun.
The clerk reportedly told the man to put the gun away, and the man listened, placing it back in his backpack — but apparently, that was not the end of the confrontation.
Gonzalez proceeded to say “he did not want to speak” with the store clerk because the clerk “was from Venezuela,” per the report, which added that the suspect “claimed he was the god from Israel” before leaving the store and walking north.
Police were told to look out for the suspect, and the cops who responded to the store said surveillance footage corroborated the two witnesses’ accounts. As it turned out, it wasn’t an officer who spotted Gonzalez next, but the store clerk, who ran to the officers’ vehicle, knocked on the window, and said he saw the man who had pulled out the gun.
Officers tracked Gonzalez down and held him at gunpoint while restraining him in handcuffs, the report says. They then searched Gonzalez’s backpack, allegedly finding a “black handgun consistent” with the gun the clerk described.
Furthermore, the officers reportedly found “several gold and silver coins encased in plastic, like those found in jewelry stores, antique shops, or pawn shops.”
Another officer arrived at the scene of Gonzalez’s arrest, apparently to help read the suspect’s Miranda rights in Spanish. However, as the officer attempted to speak, Gonzalez “repeatedly interrupted and stated that he did not need a lawyer,” the report states.
“God is my lawyer and I’m King David,” Gonzalez reportedly stated before he allegedly proceeded to make threats against the officers.
“The officer who placed handcuffs is going to die, and the officers that are involved in my arrest are going to die and their police vehicles will be engulfed in flames and all that will remain are their ashes,” Gonzalez is said to have declared.
The report concluded by saying the suspect “stated that he was put into this world to kill Venezuelans because they are attacking and killing Cubans.”
Gonzalez was jailed on a $5,000 bond.
