Authorities said Garcia, 45, who supervised a Document and Benefit Fraud Task force, shot Deputy Special Agent in Charge Kevin Kozak, 51, in his upper torso, legs and hands before being shot and killed. The shooting follows a troubled few years for the agency’s Los Angeles field office. A high-ranking official and his wife, an intelligence analyst, have been indicted and are on trial in federal court for defrauding the government.
A Police officer enters the Federal Building in Long Beach, Calif. , after reports of shots fired on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012. The FBI says a federal immigration agent shot and seriously wounded a co-worker in a workplace dispute before another agent pulled his weapon and shot the gunman to death inside a the Long Beach federal building. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were shot on the seventh floor of the Glenn M. Anderson Federal Building shortly before 6 p.m. Thursday.
Ezequiel Garcia, a longtime federal immigration agent, had told his wife of problems at work.
But when she called him at the office Thursday, everything seemed normal. They talked about having Korean barbecue for dinner. Before he could go home, however, he had to meet with a high-ranking supervisor about his job performance.
The exchange grew heated, and Garcia did the unthinkable: He turned his weapon on a fellow agent. He fired at least six shots at the supervisor before another quick-acting agent intervened and shot him dead.
The shooting, which left a second-in-command of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles riddled with gunshots, was the latest blow to a beleaguered office that has been plagued by scandals involving several of its top officials.
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