Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Time line of NPS response angers victim's family

By Carol Broeder and Ainslee Wittig
While the family of a National Park Service employee who was assaulted last Wednesday, Aug. 28, is relieved to see a suspect is being sought, they believe he could have been in jail by now had Chiricahua National Monument rangers reported it immediately to area law enforcement agencies.
Joe Gonzales is the 26-year-old son of Willcox resident Karen Gonzales, the NPS employee who was left for dead in a restroom at Chiricahua’s Faraway Ranch area, 38 miles south of Willcox. He said Sunday that he felt that law enforcement rangers wanted to keep the response in-house and did not follow protocol for contacting area law enforcement and other procedures for such an incident...
Michelle Fidler, a public information officer for NPS, said a park researcher, who is not an NPS employee, found the victim in the bathroom at 12:30 p.m. and ran back up the road to the headquarters (near the visitors center), where it was reported to NPS by 12:45 p.m.
The park researcher who found Gonzales reported that she appeared to have head trauma, and that it was unknown if she had fallen, Capas said...
NPS emergency medical personnel responded and began treating Gonzales, she said.
Fidler said NPS called HCI ambulance of Willcox directly for assistance transporting Gonzales.
When HCI medical personnel arrived, it was determined that the best course of action would be for Gonzales to be airlifted to a Tucson hospital for further treatment, said Capas.
Fidler told the Range News that NPS medical personnel are park rangers with emergency medical training and that Chiricahua National Monument has three law enforcement rangers (commissioned law officers). Two were at the park last Wednesday...
Fidler said HCI transported Gonzales to the heli-spot nearby to be airlifted to UMC.
In the meantime, Joe Gonzales said it was about 1:30 or 1:40 p.m., just after he returned to work from lunch about a quarter mile past the visitor’s center, that he was summoned by another employee who said, ‘something happened to your Mom. We think she may have fainted,’ Joe said.
“I ran to the maintenance yard to get my own vehicle and drove it to the restroom area at Faraway. I saw two LEs (law enforcement rangers) parked there. I saw a huge pool of blood outside the restroom and drag marks into the restroom and I started to run in, but (the LE) jumped in front of me and yelled at me – ‘she’s not f–ing in there.’”
“I actually felt threatened and I backed up a couple of feet and yelled, ‘where is she? Where is she?’ After seeing the blood, I was hysterical by this time; he escalated that. He told me she was at the LZ (landing zone) near the entrance area, and he followed me to my car,” Joe said.
Joe said he was able to see his mother in the ambulance and “she was awake and responded to me by nodding her head. Her hands were covered in blood.”...
“One of the employees offered to drive me back to Willcox and another would follow in my truck, so I could feed her animals before going to Tucson. And then it clicked in my head … I needed her ID, cellphone and purse, and I asked where was the truck? He said he ‘didn’t know, maybe by maintenance.’ And we drove up to (Building) 24, and another employee stopped us on the road, and I asked her about my mom’s purse and backpack,” he said.
“She said, ‘Joe, we don’t know where the truck is … we’re looking around the park.’” I felt like they knew this already, and I was pissed. I said ‘why are you looking in the park? Why hasn’t Border Patrol, the Highway Department, the Sheriff’s Office or Willcox Police been notified?’ And, they said, ‘We’re working on it,’” he said.
“I called Lindsey (Joe’s sister) and told her to get a hold of the Sheriff’s Office. I felt like they were trying to keep it under wraps that a government rig got stolen. I watched two visitors drive right out of the park past me and I said, ‘Why isn’t this gate shut? This is a crime scene!’
“Why did I have to think of that?” Joe said...
It was not until about 3:20 p.m. Wednesday, that the Sheriff’s Office received a call about the assault, Capas said...
Ellis said, “I talked to (NPS employees) at the hospital. I said, if you’d had someone notify every law enforcement agency and put out an ATL immediately – not two hours later — the Border Patrol would have gotten them immediately. Willcox Police was only notified that they needed an ambulance. They said they were caring for for their employee. But that’s not an excuse. They don’t know common protocol for law enforcement.”