Texas man Harold Thompson shot Gabriella Gonzalez for abortion, police say: NPR
Google Street View/NPR Screenshot
A man shot dead his girlfriend in Dallas on Wednesday because he was upset she had an abortion, court records say.
Harold Thompson, 22, is facing murder charges in connection with the death of 26-year-old Gabriella Gonzalez.
According to an affidavit of the arrest, the pair were in a “dating relationship” and were seen walking together in the parking lot of a gas station the morning after Gonzalez traveled to Colorado for an abortion.
Texas has banned abortion in most stages of pregnancy since then inversion of Roe sues Wade in June 2022. Colorado’s abortion law is one of the country’s most permissive, legal abortion At most stages of pregnancy, there is no waiting period.
Dallas County Sheriff
A police investigator wrote that Thompson was believed to be the father of the child Gonzalez and that he did not want her to abort the pregnancy.
Surveillance video shows Thompson “suffocating” Gonzalez while they were talking, police said, but she “shrugs him off”.
Thompson then pulled out a gun and shot Gonzalez several times before fleeing. Police declared Gonzalez dead at the scene.
Thompson is being held at the Dallas County Jail. Court records show he will be represented by a state-appointed attorney but do not list his attorney’s name or contact information.
Court records show a separate arrest warrant for Thompson, issued in March, was still in effect at the time of the shooting. The March affidavit did not name Gonzalez as the complainant, but the May affidavit described her as a “victim” in the then-reported incident.
The affidavit contains a March statement that says Thompson beat the victim, a woman who was pregnant with his child, multiple times throughout their relationship, including trying to strangle her and to give her a black eye.
The victim testified that Thompson had “brutally assaulted her and left her with bruises” and was still “very afraid of the suspect”, police wrote.
“She was afraid of the suspect because he had threatened to harm her family and her children,” the arrest warrant states. “She has a child from another relationship, and the suspect is very jealous of the complainant’s ex-boyfriend.”
Court records show Gonzalez’s sister, Mileny Rubio, was a witness to the shooting.
“He was so angry that she wanted to stay away from him,” she told the local news agency local news outlet KXAS. She then added, “I know she’s not okay but we can’t get help, we don’t know how.”
Gonzalez had just ended a tumultuous four-month relationship with Thompson when the shooting happened, her family said.