Woman Says She Feared Deputies Would Kill Her

The Mexican woman whose videotaped beating has been broadcast around the world met the media after her release from jail Tuesday, but spent much of the brief news conference in tears.

At one point, however, Leticia Gonzalez Gonzalez, 32, composed herself enough to say: “I thought they were going to kill me.”

Gonzalez and her companion, Enrique Funes, were beaten by Riverside County sheriff’s deputies after a high-speed chase Monday. She was released by the Immigration and Naturalization Service about 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Appearing frightened and bewildered, Gonzalez faced a crowd of shoving, shouting reporters and photographers who greeted her outside the INS detention center in the Los Angeles Federal Building.

Like the other 18 suspected illegal immigrants captured after the long chase from Temecula to South El Monte, she had been in the dark about how much publicity the incident had generated.

“They had no idea of the controversy that has grown out of this incident,” said attorney Peter Schey of the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. “They haven’t seen the tape. They’ve been in federal custody the whole time. All they want to do now is go home to Mexico.”

Clad in white pants and a red sweater, the disheveled Gonzalez had appeared in pain as she hobbled from the jail, supporting herself on the arm of her attorney, David Ross.

She answered none of the shouted questions then, but was whisked to the news conference at the Mexican Consulate just west of downtown, where camera crews temporarily blocked her exit from an elevator as they poked their lenses through the open elevator door.

Gonzalez’s face was nearly obscured by her shoulder-length hair as Jose Angel Pescador Osuna, the consul general of Mexico, and Ross helped her take a seat. Tears streamed down her face as she answered a handful of questions in a voice audible only to Pescador, who acted as her translator.

“She says she needs help,” Pescador translated. “She says she needs to be out of this problem. She doesn’t know exactly what happened. She was beaten so badly she has practically been in shock.”

Ross explained that Gonzalez could not answer any specific questions about the deputies’ actions, which have sparked several investigations. He said he had agreed to bring her to the consulate, despite her need for medical attention, because the “Mexican government has been so incredibly supportive.”

“She only knows that she is in a foreign country and she has a lot of problems,” Ross said. “She said she came to the United States because she is looking for a job.

“She was just in a vehicle,” Ross said. “She does not know why the driver did what he did. When she left that vehicle, she was treated in a brutal fashion. She doesn’t know why they did that.”

While in custody, Gonzalez was examined by a public health nurse whose report indicates that she suffered severe bruises to nine different areas of her body, Ross said.

“We don’t know about broken bones or internal injuries,” he said, because X-rays were yet to be taken.

Her companion was scheduled to be transferred Tuesday from a Riverside hospital to an INS detention center in Los Angeles.

Gonzalez and Funes are from a small town near Mexico City, Ross said, and she has two children who live in the state of Michoacan.

The couple were making their first crossing into the United States--she in the cab of the pickup and he in the back--to look for work.

After the high-speed chase that went on for 80 miles, the driver shouted that he was going to pull over, authorities said. When he did, an exodus ensued as people leaped from the back of the truck and scrambled out of the front.

In the commotion, Ross said, Gonzalez became trapped in the cab. In the videotape, Funes can be seen jumping out of the back of the truck and helping to extricate her.

The two deputies are seen approaching as he helps pull Gonzalez out.

Then came the beatings.

Times staff writer Eric Slater contributed to this story.