Tito Gonzalez
Just a scant few hours after the Light Up Oak Lawn march down Cedar Springs, Tito Gonzalez was walking home from work Sunday night, Nov. 1, as he usually does. He works on Cedar Springs Road and gets off late at night, but only lives a few blocks from work. And he’s always looking over his shoulder as he walks.
“Nothing ever happens,” Gonzalez said. “Last night was completely different.”
He was walking down Reagan Street, trying to avoid some of the puddles in the sidewalk. So he stepped onto the grass at one point. But as he got back on the sidewalk, someone came at him, out of nowhere. So Gonzalez started to walk across the street. And a second person came out of nowhere, and this one pointed a gun at him.
“I closed my eyes,” Gonzalez said. “If that was going to be the …” He couldn’t finish that sentence.
“Then everything jumbled. Even their words.”
Gonzalez said he didn’t think he was going to make it home.
He was beaten, but he covered his face, so most of the scrapes are on his hands, legs and body. His phone and rent money were stolen, and he spent today (Monday, Nov. 2) alone at home, scared and confused, wondering how someone could do that to him.
“I don’t hurt people,” Gonzalez said.
Second incident
Michael Redman
Michael Redman and two friends left The Tin Room on Hudnall Street about 2 a.m. Sunday night, walking to his car about a block away. Redman said they had just reached his car when a man suddenly appeared, threatening him with a gun and pinning him against the car.
“He kept saying one of us was going to die,” Redman recalled, adding that a woman was with the man. The first time he noticed her, she was already sitting in the passenger seat of his car.
Redman said the two suspects stole his money and his friends’ money, but didn’t take their wallets. The two also took Redman’s keys and drove off in his car.
Redman said the man who attacked him was black, about 6 feet, 2 inches tall with two teardrop tattoos under one of his eyes. He was wearing a full-length trench coat. The woman was shorter, Hispanic and had very short hair.
Of the recent series of attacks, this is the first in this part of Oak Lawn, the first with several people walking together and the first in a lighted area.