‘I Didn’t Even Hear the Bullet’

In his first interview since being shot outside his home, South Gate Mayor Henry Gonzalez said Tuesday he never saw his assailant and after the attack he collapsed on the ground, pretending to be unconscious until his family discovered him lying in a pool of blood.

“I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t even hear the bullet,” he said in a telephone interview from his home, where he is recovering from a superficial head wound. “I went down like a sack of potatoes.”

Gonzalez, who was released from the hospital Monday, declined to guess why he was shot in the April 13 attack. He said he is disturbed by speculation among some city officials and business owners that the shooting was related to last month’s volatile City Council campaign.

“I don’t want to speculate,” he said. “I don’t have any proof of anything.”

Gonzalez narrowly won reelection in this working-class community in southeast Los Angeles County following a campaign that drew complaints of smear tactics from several candidates. One anonymous flier, for example, accused Gonzalez of becoming a millionaire through kickbacks and illegal deals with city business owners.

South Gate police and investigators from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have declined to discuss a motive for the shooting. Authorities have interviewed several witnesses but are revealing little about their investigation.

Friends and family members said they believe the assailant was waiting for Gonzalez to come home.

Undaunted, Gonzalez, 64, said he plans to attend next week’s City Council meeting. “I’m not going to be intimidated,” he said.

The bullet grazed his skull and left fragments in his scalp, Gonzalez said. Doctors at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, where he was treated, did not operate to remove the fragments, he said, and instead will wait for them to work their way to the surface.

Gonzalez, who has been on the council for 13 years, was shot as he returned home about 10:50 p.m. from what had been a routine council meeting. He said he was getting out of his car in his driveway at the corner of Alexander and Michigan avenues when he felt “a thousand-pound weight” hit him on the back of the head.

Gonzalez said he did not lose consciousness but fell to the ground, breaking his glasses. The mayor assumed he was being robbed, he said, so he pretended to be unconscious.

Gonzalez’s daughter-in-law, Laura Gonzalez, heard the gunshot and went outside, where she found the mayor. The shot bruised his brain, and for a moment after the attack he said he could not recognize his wife, Theresa. Gonzalez said he did not realize that he had been shot until he overheard an ambulance attendant describe the wound en route to the hospital.

Gonzalez said he has been deeply touched by the cards and flowers sent by supporters. “It feels like a funeral parlor at my house because of all the flowers,” he joked. “It’s really working on my allergies.”

He said he cried after receiving a phone call and a letter from Gov. Gray Davis and his wife.

Gonzalez, who sounded in good spirits, said, “I’ve been thanking the good Lord that he didn’t want to take me.”