Gunshot revelry may mean deportation for Huron (Calif.) man

[Newsjock]

Source: Fresno Bee

Evarardo Reynosa-Contreras was following a time-honored tradition for some in the central San Joaquin Valley when he raised a rifle and fired into the air to celebrate the new year. Now the Huron resident faces deportation to his native Mexico and a ban on ever returning to the United States.

Reynosa-Contreras, 23, faces a federal change of being an illegal immigrant in possession of a firearm. He came to the attention of federal agents after Huron police passed along information about the New Year’s incident.

... He was apprehended in an open field by a police dog, who bit him on the upper and lower right arm as he resisted arrest. In a subsequent interview at the Fresno County Jail — where Reynosa-Contreras is being held — he said he was born in Michoacán state in Mexico and had illegally entered the United States in 2002. Prado’s report said that there was no federal file on Reynosa-Contreras and he was unknown to authorities.

Reynosa-Contreras is scheduled to make an initial appearance this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Austin. He faces federal prison time and then deportation. He will not be allowed to re-enter the United States because his crime is considered a serious felony.

Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/updates/story/1116960.html

[DavidDvorkin]

1. Now if only we could do something about everyone else who fires into the air in celebration.

[Xithras]

3. His stupidity was firing it in town...in Huron.

Seriously, Huron is a flyspeck on the back of a flyspeck, and you can walk into the open countryside from any point in town in about 3 minutes. In California, shooting into the air is legal IF it's done outside of urban areas AND the shots are fired away from any sort of structures. For this guy to be busted for that crime in a town that small tells me that he was incredibly stupid. Looking at the location of the apartment complex (Google Maps) it appears that his apartment backs up to farmland as well. My guess, in a town that small, is that they probably would have let him off with a warning if he hadn't run. The fact that he fled officers, ran to his apartment, used a preschooler as a human shield, fled the apartment again, and had to be subdued by a police dog probably pissed the police off enough to convince them to go this route. He sounds like a real winner.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. He's certainly no loss to this country

Nor will he be a gain to Mexico.

Firing blindly, even in what appears to be open countryside, is foolish. People, pets, farm animals may be present and not visible.

[Xithras]

7. I didn't say it wasn't stupid. It's just not illegal.

My point was simply that he could have walked one minute out of town and none of this would have happened. He's not a bright bulb.

The original article is right when it says that it's an SJV tradition though. It sounded like a warzone outside a few days ago.

[DavidDvorkin]

14. Oh, I understood that, and I didn't mean it as an attack on you

Just a comment.

The firing-in-the-air thing always amazes me.

[UpInArms]

12. I call my idiot neighbors "the nomo-taliban"

because of their exuberant use of guns

[elocs]

2. What goes up must come down. Where do these idiots who fire in the air think their bullets go

I am sure there must be people who have been hurt or killed by that.

[DavidDvorkin]

5. Into orbit!

Everyone knows that!

[slackmaster]

16. Yes, people have been injured and a small number killed

Mythbusters did a segment on falling bullets. Their terminal velocity is enough to cause some damage.

I have found two small bullets embedded in (asphalt) shingles on my roof. I've heard what may have been bullets bouncing off a few times. My back porch is covered with an aluminum awning. That has a .38 caliber hole from before I moved in. (I filled it with silicone to keep the water from pouring in.

My neighborhood is very safe, but there is a relatively high crime area to the east across a freeway. All of the falling bullets seem to be on a trajectory from over there.

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. Why does your law enforcement always have to be so brutal. Unsurprisingly,

the descending bullet or bullets can be dangerous, but where, where, is the humanity, the reason, the proportion?

He comes from a different culture, evidently not the smartest end of it, either. Why punish him in such a draconian way? If crooked white-collar criminals, who really do wreak absolute havoc on our societies, don't have a pistol put to their head, as they do in China, why should a man who was unlikely to have harmed anyone, and that, through foolishness rather than malice and calculation, be actually imprisoned? Can he expect it to be of the country-club type? Even that would be an outrage, but I expect it would be "hard time", anyway. Or is it just more of the same, part of the racket to enrich the stockholder and boardroom hoodlums of the penal-system? Yet another outrageous instance.

[Xithras]

8. Proportion? He used a preschooler as a human shield.

The serious crime here isn't that he had a gun, but how he reacted when the police took notice. Just like Al Capone going to jail for tax evasion, I suspect that the LEO's simply decided that this was the simplest route to rid themselves of a not-so-nice problem.

[Joe Chi Minh]

18. Well, that doesn't exactly invite mercy does it? I was wrong.

[WriteDown]

11. Brutal?

They can be a heck of a lot worse than simply "dangerous."

http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/23518564.html

[Joe Chi Minh]

17. Yes. It seems I'm wrong on this topic.

[msanthrope]

9. My repairman pulled a smashed-up bullet from my tar roof..I live in a 3

story Victorian brownstone. How did the slug get up there, and deep enough into my roof to cause extensive, but slow leakage of rainwater???

Asswipes in the city of Philadelphia who celebrate New Year's Eve by firing guns.

Of course, the slug was located above my 6 year-old's room.

Now, every New Year's, she spends on the second floor.

Throw this fucktard out of the country. We have enough stupid, already.

[40ozDonkey]

10. In a perfect world, the NRA and Minutemen would get in fistfight over this. n/t

[slackmaster]

13. Paging Red Foreman...

[pinniped]

15. It sounds like he resisted arrest by the police dog, so he/she bit him.

The dog's a sworn peace officer. I guess the canine could effectively make an arrest.

He was apprehended in an open field by a police dog, who bit him on the upper and lower right arm as he resisted arrest.