Gustavo Garcia, (36) an
illegal immigrant, began with a shooting of random victims in an orchard, and continued with a robbery at a convenience store, and more shootings, and a
carjacking, ending with a wrong-way police chase on a highway. During the spree he shot a woman seated in her car in the parking lot of a Motel 6 in Tulare, shot up a Shell gasoline station in
Pixley, shot and killed a person standing outside a gas station in Visalia, and, at around 3 a.m. on the morning of Monday the 17th, was reported to police for standing in his ex-girlfriend's backyard, yelling threats as he shot at her house. He then disappeared before police arrived. Garcia had been arrested for being under the influence two days before he went on his crime spree, but was released because California police are not allowed to hold illegal aliens arrested for misdemeanors in order to turn them over to federal ICE agents for deportation. According to Tulare police, Garcia stole the ammunition he used in the shooting from a Walmart store which had not secured the ammunition properly. Following Garcia's arrest,
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) notified local police that he had already been deported twice, in 2004 and 2014. Garcia Garcia served 2 years in prison for a 2013 armed robbery, and another 27 months in prison for illegally reentering the country, before he was deported for the second time in 2014. ICE issued an immigration hold against Garcia following his arrest, but the hold was not honored. Tulare County's Board of Supervisors had adopted a resolution opposing California's "Sanctuary State" law in May 2018, but the resolution did not alter the state law's prohibition of local police holding illegal aliens charged with misdemeanors for deportation by ICE. ==Perpetrator==