Four years after Austin police officers shot and killed Alex Gonzales Jr., one of those officers – and the city itself – will stand trial for the killing.
The trial comes as a result of a civil lawsuit filed by Gonzales’ parents 18 months after their son was killed. Jessica Arellano, Gonzales’ former girlfriend who was shot and injured, also filed suit; she settled with the city for $550,000 last month.
The civil trial also represents the last opportunity they have to gain what they consider to be justice – neither of the officers involved in the shooting, Luis Serrato and Gabriel Gutierrez, faced criminal charges for their actions, nor were they disciplined by the Austin Police Department.
Serrato, the on-duty officer who fatally shot Gonzales, was dismissed from the lawsuit by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman in March. But Gutierrez, the off-duty officer who initially shot Gonzales following an altercation between the two men while they were driving alongside each other in Southeast Austin, and the city itself, remain liable.
The fact that the city of Austin is on trial is significant. In April, UCLA School of Law professor Joanna Schwartz told the Chronicle that proving claims against municipalities in police violence lawsuits is “very hard at every stage of the case.” A review of 1,000 police violence lawsuits conducted by Schwartz found that about 97% of the suits were either settled before trial, dismissed, or abandoned by plaintiffs.
In this case, the plaintiff’s attorneys have emphasized the role they argue the city and APD played in Gonzales’ death. They have argued that because APD has historically failed to thoroughly investigate many officer use-of-force cases and because so few officers are disciplined for use of force, Gutierrez may have thought he could shoot Gonzales without serious repercussions (Gutierrez’s attorney, Albert Lopez, declined to comment for our story).
“We are committed to seeing that there are reforms.” – Lead attorney Donald Puckett
Pitman appears to have found this line of argument persuasive – in March, he ruled that the plaintiffs had presented enough evidence showing that “the city had a practice of permitting excessive force by under-investigating and under-disciplining the majority of officers who engaged in excessive force” and that a “reasonable jury could find that such a practice created a culture of officer impunity.”
That alleged “culture of impunity” is also a target for the plaintiffs, lead attorney Donald Puckett told us. “We are committed to seeing that there are reforms to APD’s Special Investigations Unit [the APD unit that investigates officers accused of criminal conduct] and Internal Affairs Division [the unit that investigates officers for alleged department policy violations],” Puckett said. To that end, the plaintiffs are seeking three reforms through either a settlement or a verdict: that APD begin documenting justifications for declining to discipline officers who shoot people, that the documentation and evidence supporting it be made public, and that the department commit to a “full administrative review” of Gutierrez’s official statements made throughout the investigative process.
At this point, a settlement seems out of reach. Puckett says he and his clients are open to discussing one, but the city has refused to do so. A city spokesperson told us that the city cannot comment on settlement negotiations, but that the city looks “forward to presenting its position in this case to a jury.”
Jury selection in the trial is scheduled to begin Friday morning, June 20. If a jury is seated on Friday, presentation of evidence in the trial will begin on Monday, June 23.
This article appears in June 20 • 2025.