GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – Several months after a December 2016 incident in which an FBI agent fired shots at a Grand Rapids police cruiser following a drunken night with his partner, new video has been obtained by FOX 17.
The footage shows Las Vegas-based federal agent Ruben Hernandez firing the shots from the parking lot of the 28th Street Planet Fitness location as a GRPD cruiser pulls up and shines its light on the intoxicated Hernandez.
Later, video shows Hernandez being placed in the back of a police car, clearly disoriented, confused, and murmuring to himself and to GRPD officers in both Spanish and English.
Body cam video then shows police conducting patron and employee interviews inside the Planet Fitness, where Hernandez apparently barged in, waved his semi-automatic gun and shouted nonsense to someone on a phone.
“He ran behind the desk and stands right here and [says] ‘lock the door,’ with a gun, like, ‘They’re going to kill us all,’" recalled one Planet Fitness employee, seen on body camera giving her account of the night to police officers. "And I was like, whoa, what’s going on?"
“We were in the right place at the right time,” says one GRPD officer to another, after taking witness accounts.
“That couldn’t have happened any better,” replies the other.
Hernandez is set to be sentenced Thursday after entering a no contest plea on a felonious assault charge. No contest is not an admission of guilt but was part of a plea deal, Hernandez is avoiding jail time.
Video previously obtained by FOX 17 shows Hernandez’s partner, FBI agent John Salazar, entering GRPD to retrieve his arrested colleague the night of the incident. No word yet on whether Salazar, who was with Hernandez and also drunk that night, will face charges.
Reports show the two had dinner at Brann’s Steakhouse downtown, ate, and consumed 12 beers between the two of them before heading south and hitting Sensations Nightclub around midnight. Hernandez is later seen on video camera leaving the club before his encounter with police.
