ICE Agent Fired Seven Shots at a Car With a 5-Year-Old Inside in Manhattan; Judge Bars Driver’s Deportation
An ICE agent shot a 28-year-old man in Manhattan’s Marble Hill on Oct. 8, 2026, as his 5-year-old son sat in the car. A judge has barred his deportation.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fired seven shots at a car in Manhattan’s Marble Hill neighborhood on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, wounding the 28-year-old driver in the neck while his 5-year-old son sat in the back seat, New York City officials said. The boy was not hurt.
ICE agents were trying to arrest the man when one of them opened fire at about 4 p.m. near West 225th Street and Marble Hill Avenue, according to CBS News and ABC7 New York. His wound was described as superficial. NYPD officers took him to a hospital, and he was later taken into federal custody.
New York police and court records identify him as Oscar Belgal. His lawyers spell his last name Bergal, NY1 reported.
Two accounts
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said city cameras recorded two plainclothes federal officers approaching the car, one with his gun drawn, before the car moved forward out of the camera’s view. The cameras did not capture the shooting.
Federal officials said the agents believed they were in danger because the man drove toward their vehicles as they tried to box him in. They said the agents did not know the child was in the car. “Our officers, using their training and believing that their life and the life of the partners and the general public were in danger, used their training and fired weapons,” said Marcos Charles, who leads ICE’s enforcement and removal operations.
Federal officials said the man, who is from the Dominican Republic, was in the United States illegally, has a prior conviction and had evaded an earlier ICE attempt to arrest him. He has pleaded not guilty in a pending drug-sale case.
A judge steps in
On Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, a federal judge temporarily barred the government from deporting him after his lawyers challenged his detention. “Regardless of whether or not someone has a criminal history, it is not lawful, it is not okay, to shoot a father in the afternoon with his son in the backseat,” said Harold Solis, a lawyer with Make the Road New York who represents him.
Federal agencies are investigating the shooting, Tisch said. New York City and state officials criticized the shooting and pressed for the man’s release.
