By Vicky Wedig
Staff Writer
A jury deliberated for about three hours April 20 before finding a Walworth man guilty of trying to kill his adult son two days after Christmas in 2015.
Gabino Dominguez Gonzalez, 42, was found guilty of attempted first-degree intentional homicide and aggravated battery intending great bodily harm. He faces up to 75 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced June 28.
The charges stem from the Dec. 27, 2015, beating of Gonzalez’s then-23-year-old son at their Beloit Street apartment in Walworth.
According to the criminal complaint, on Dec. 26, Gonzalez and his son went out to the Show Palace in the Town of Darien where they drank. Gonzalez told police his son became angry when Gonzalez wanted to leave the club, they began to argue, and the son punched Gonzalez in the parking lot and said, “I’m going to hell and taking you with me,” according to the complaint. A manager intervened, Gonzalez told police.
Gonzalez and his son returned to their Walworth home where Gonzalez said the man attacked him when he came out of the bathroom, according to the complaint. Gonzalez said he grabbed a baseball bat and hit the man three or four times, according to the complaint.
The man was lying face up in a bedroom when police arrived with no shirt on, bruising on his upper body and blood on his face and head and the floor, according to the complaint.
The man was taken to Mercy Hospital in Janesville with facial fractures, sill fractures, bleeding on his brain, bruising and swelling on his chest and shoulders, severe deformity of his face, contusions on his abdomen, a cut on his head and a detached retina, according to the complaint.
Walworth County assistant district attorney Haley Johnson, who prosecuted the case, said Gonzalez’s son survived the attack but spent 11 days in the hospital afterward. He suffered severe facial fractures and damage to his skull, she said. The most significant damage was to his eye, which sustained partial vision loss, she said.
The jury of six men and six women heard 3 ½ days of testimony last week before beginning deliberations just before noon April 20. At one point during deliberations, the jury asked to again hear the recording of the 911 call Gonzalez’s then-11-year-old daughter made during the attack.
Gonzalez’s wife told police she left the apartment with her daughter after Gonzalez called her to the parking lot of the apartment building at about 11:50 p.m. Dec. 26, 2015, and said he was “going to show (his son) who was in charge,” according to the criminal complaint. She returned to the home and had her daughter call 911 en route when a neighbor called her and said the fight was “turning nasty.” The woman said Gonzalez is abusive and she fears for herself and her daughters, according to the complaint.
On the six-minute 911 call, jurors heard the frantic girl screaming and crying. Much of the dialogue was indiscernible. Sobbing, the girl screamed, “It’s an emergency, seriously! Please hurry!” She said, “He killed him!” and repeatedly shouted, “Please hurry!”
