A Father, a Son, and a Traffic Stop That Ended in Gunfire

In a city of eight million stories, some are told in court filings and surveillance footage, in the careful language of legal petitions and the grainy frames of security cameras. The story of Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old Dominican Republic national, is one of those—a story still being written, still contested, still painful.

Belgal was shot in the neck by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on October 2 in Marble Hill, a small neighborhood at the northern tip of Manhattan. His 5-year-old son was in the back seat of the car . He survived. He remains in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where a bullet is still lodged in his neck and where, his lawyers say, he has yet to receive surgery .

On Wednesday, The Legal Aid Society filed a petition in Brooklyn federal court seeking Belgal's release. In that filing, his attorneys offered an account that differs sharply from the one provided by the Department of Homeland Security. They say Belgal had just picked up his son from school and was stopped in front of a fire hydrant, looking for a parking spot, when a masked man in a sweatshirt and red hat ran up to the vehicle with his gun drawn. The man, they say, did not identify himself, did not show any documents, and did not communicate in any substantive way. Instead, he smashed the driver's side window with the barrel of his gun and began firing into the car while Belgal's son cowered in the back seat .

Surveillance camera footage released by the New York Police Department shows some of the encounter. A man in a red hat runs up to the car, points his gun, and strikes the window. It shatters. A second officer appears. Belgal then pulls into the street, away from the officers, and the car moves out of the camera's view . What happened next is not visible on that footage, but the chase ended moments later with Belgal's car against a concrete barrier, bullet holes in the windshield. Video from bystanders and police body cameras shows officers handcuffing Belgal and tending to the wound on his neck as he sat on the pavement .

The Department of Homeland Security has maintained that ICE officers fired because they believed their lives were in danger. The agency has said Belgal drove his car into two government vehicles and accelerated toward other officers, and that he has ties to the Trinitarios gang. DHS did not comment Wednesday on the new allegations from Belgal's lawyers .

The shooting has drawn condemnation from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who called it "unconscionable" and said the agents wore construction vests and masks that concealed their faces, making it impossible to identify them as federal officers. "School had just gotten out," Mamdani said. "The street was crowded with families and children" . Governor Kathy Hochul also criticized what she described as "a pattern of violence by ICE" and demanded answers from federal authorities .

Belgal's lawyers say he did not learn the men were ICE officers until he woke up in the hospital. They say he has lost sensation on the left side of his face and has impaired hearing. "With a bullet still lodged in his neck and his serious medical needs unmet," attorneys Perry McAninch and Elyssa Williams wrote, "every additional day in custody puts him at further risk" .

The court petition seeking his release is now before a federal judge. A separate judge last week temporarily barred Belgal from being deported or transferred outside the New York area without prior court approval. The investigation into the shooting continues, with the Department of Homeland Security taking control of the inquiry .

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Sources: CBS News, The Guardian, PIX11, PressTV, Open Magazine