Four days after ICE agents in the Central Valley shot a man through a car window, an eyewitness now says at least one agent opened fire unprovoked, corroborating the shooting victim’s account that shots began before he tried to drive away.
The witness and her attorney detailed her claims and showed new dashboard-camera video taken from her vehicle, raising further questions about the latest case of use of deadly force in a national immigration crackdown.
But federal officials have yet to address the multiple accounts that contradict their justification for the shooting. At least one expert says the case highlights a system devoid of accountability that will allow such shootings to continue, despite the national outcry over two killings by ICE agents in Minneapolis earlier this year.
On April 7, agents pulled over Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernández near Interstate 5 highway in Patterson, about 40 miles south of Stockton, a traffic stop that soon escalated as agents opened fire.
ICE Director Todd Lyons wrote in a statement that day that Mendoza Hernández was a gang member wanted in connection to a murder in El Salvador. Lyons, in a statement later that day, said agents had fired their guns because Mendoza Hernández “weaponized his vehicle,” attempting to run them over.
In a news conference on Saturday, a woman identified as Christina who asked not to share her last name because she has already received hate messages over her involvement in the case, said she was on her way to work on April 7 when she drove toward the scene of the traffic stop.
The officer was pointing his firearm at the traffic. There were a lot of people and it was happening really fast.”
Eyewitness to April 7 ICE shooting
She said she heard one gunshot before she saw Mendoza Hernández back up his car.
“It was one gunshot by itself, and then it seemed like a long time before I heard the others,” she said. In total, she says she heard six or seven shots fired.
In a previous interview, Christina told a reporter from CNN that the car moved prior to the gunshots, which came in rapid succession. But in the news conference on Saturday, Christina revised her story, saying one shot was fired prior to the car moving. She said she remembered the events with more clarity after reviewing the footage from her dashboard camera. Her video, like another one previously publicized in the case, does not have audio.
Christina said she was worried the gunshots would hit her car as well. “The officer was pointing his firearm at the traffic,” she said. “There were a lot of people and it was happening really fast. I wanted to turn around but there was nowhere to go.”
Christina’s lawyer, Roberto Serrato, said next week she will meet with the FBI, which is investigating the case.
Victim’s account
The eyewitness account tracks closely with claims made earlier in the week by Patrick Kolasinski, an attorney representing Mendoza Hernández and his family.
Kolasinski said he interviewed his client in the hospital, and the man was adamant that agents began shooting before he moved his car.
“He said he moved backwards because he was being shot at,” Kolasinski said Thursday. “He fled in a panic because he was being fired on.”
Mendoza Hernández’s family also denied that the man had any gang connections. His attorney said he had formerly acquitted for murder in El Salvador prior to migrating to the United States, and could not be wanted in the case now.
He is currently in the ICU in a hospital in Modesto, after suffering at least six gunshot wounds, including one to the jaw. Kolasinki said this week that it was unclear whether his client would end up in custody of any law enforcement agency once release.
Video published by KCRA-TV, captured by another vehicle that was ahead of Christina’s on the same road, shows Mendoza Hernández’s car on the roadside, flanked by armed agents who appear to try to reach inside.
In the video, several agents surrounding the car appear to have their handguns already drawn — but like Christina’s video, the earlier video has no audio, so it’s unclear when the shooting begins.
The car shifts into reverse and begins backing up. As it does, a piece of debris from the car flies into the air. After that, the car strikes an unmarked pickup truck sitting behind it on the roadside, then pulls forward as agents spread out and drives over the median into a lane with oncoming traffic.
A pattern of gunfire, questions
This shooting was part of a pattern in recent months of ICE agents using their firearms during traffic stops. A Wall Street Journal investigation found 13 instances of ICE agents shooting at cars from July 2025 to January 2026, including the killing of Renee Good, a U.S. citizen shot while trying to drive away from agents in Minneapolis.
ICE has not responded to Mendoza Hernández or the other witness’s claims contradicting their version of events. In response to questions from Stocktonia this week, a Department of Homeland Security official replied by sending a copy of the same statement Lyons had made April 7, reiterating their insistence that Mendoza Hernández was a gang affiliate and had “weaponized his vehicle.”
While the FBI says it is investigating the shooting, neither the bureau nor immigration officials have indicated any timeline for the investigation, and have not responded to questions about when they will release the names of the agents involved. In both deadly shootings in Minneapolis, ICE refused to identify the agents involved; their names were later made public through media reporting on court documents in the cases.
Mike Fox, a legal scholar with the Cato institute, a public policy think tank, said shootings like this one will likely continue to occur if there is no mechanism to hold ICE agents accountable for endangering members of the public.
“If I walk outside and start shooting in the air, I would definitely go to jail, and I should. But if a cop does it, well then it’s somehow a different question,” he said.
Fox said ICE’s use of force policies do not condone shooting people through car windows, but if the federal government declines to charge officers when they step out of line, there is no way to prevent more shootings like this one. He says Congress or state governments would need to add federal agents to existing laws that allow citizens to sue members of local or state law enforcement.
So far, political leaders representing Patterson, like Rep. Adam Gray (D-Merced) and Gov. Gavin Newsom, have made statements acknowledging the shooting, but not about the use of force.
“There’s no way to hold them accountable, so we’ve normalized this,” Fox said.
