A 20-year-old Kansas City, Kansas, man will serve nearly three years in prison for a 2023 shoplifting incident at Oak Park Mall that ended with him getting a hold of a police officer’s gun and firing it, prompting panic in the mall’s food court.
On Monday, Nery Gonzalez-Munoz was sentenced in Johnson County District Court to a total of 34 months in prison.
The sentence includes 17 months each for two counts of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, which will run consecutively, and 12 months for misdemeanor theft, which will run concurrently.
Gonzalez-Munoz originally faced nine criminal charges, alongside co-defendant Alex Monroy, in connection to the incident that occurred on Nov. 12, 2023, when investigators say they caught the pair shoplifting.
Gonzalez-Munoz ended up wrestling with a police officer who was trying to arrest him in the mall’s food court area. Ultimately, investigators say Gonzalez-Munoz grabbed the officer’s service weapon and fired it. No one was harmed.
Judge Neil B. Foth handed down the sentence.
The incident incited a panic
Leading up to the shooting, a plain clothes Overland Park police officer observed Gonzalez-Munoz and Monroy taking clothes from Macy’s, exiting the department store, and “walking quickly through the food court” toward a mall exit, according to a criminal affidavit.
Two other officers got into a struggle with Gonzalez-Munoz in the food court as Monroy led another officer on a chase out into the parking lot, the affidavit stated.
In the food court, Gonzalez-Munoz grabbed one of the officer’s service firearms and fired it once, hitting a food court chair where a child had been sitting nine seconds before.
At the same time, Monroy reentered the mall through Dillard’s, where he “attempted to lose [another officer] in the crowds exiting the mall after the gunshot” according to the affidavit.
During the sentencing, Assistant District Attorney Ryann Walkiewicz showed security camera footage from multiple angles that captured the panic during the shooting, with groups of people, including parents carrying small children, running toward the mall’s exits.
It also showed police tackling and arresting Gonzalez-Munoz as he struggled with the officer.
“The point of this, judge, is to show that the actions of these defendants were significant enough to cause this sort of terror within Oak Park Mall, a place where individuals feel like they can shop, they can go and be free from things like this here in Johnson County, Kansas,” Walkiewicz said.
Gonzalez’s attorney focused on his lack of criminal record
While Walkiewicz focused on the panic the shooting caused, Daniel Parker and Brian Hill, Gonzalez-Munoz’s attorneys, focused on their client taking responsibility for the crime and his lack of a prior criminal history.
Instead of a prison sentence, Gonzalez-Munoz’s attorneys asked Judge Foth to sentence him to probation.
“There’s no justification for what happened. We’re not trying to justify anything,” Hill said. “He needs help with therapy and self-recognition and acknowledging that he has a long way to go as far as making better decisions. And I think his 13 or 15 months that he sat in custody so far has given him sufficient time to address the poor decisions that he made and acknowledge the situation.”
Addressing Judge Foth, Gonzalez-Munoz apologized for the panic he caused.
“I’m sincerely sorry for my actions and my crime that I have committed and everybody that was affected by it. If I could, I would take it back,” he said. “I repent it every day, and it goes through my head more than 1,000 times, how I could have done it differently.”
With his family seated behind him in court, Gonzalez-Munoz asked if he could go home to them.
“I just want to ask (that) I can just go back home to my family as soon as I can. They need me, and I need them as much as they need me,” he said.
Judge sentenced Gonzalez-Munoz to prison
Foth said he appreciated Gonzalez-Munoz’s apology and the steps he’s made to correct his behavior, but added that he couldn’t get past the idea that the result of the shooting could have been much worse.
“It just seems that we’re here as a matter of luck, that these debates would be irrelevant, and you would be looking at decades in prison for the murder of a police officer or the death of a bystander (if the stray bullet hit someone),” he said. “(That) makes it impossible for me to go back all the way to ‘He has no criminal history and a supportive family.'”
The factors of the crime, including Gonzalez-Munoz bringing a gun he illegally had in his possession to the mall, wrestling the officer, taking his gun and firing it in a crowded mall, all argued against him getting probation, Foth said.
Still, Foth gave him a slightly shorter prison sentence, lowering it from the 38 months recommended by prosecutors to 34 months.
“I appreciate the fact that you’ve had some reflection on this. I appreciate your apology. I appreciate the responsibility you’ve taken,” he said.
He added: “Again, we’re coming close to (you) serving either the rest of your life in prison if that gun had gone off in the police officer’s gut or a couple of decades, maybe, if the pedestrian or the bystander had been hit.”
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