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HARLINGEN — Harlingen attorney Ernesto Gonzales has been missing and not heard from since July 18.
But now new information is emerging about the days and weeks that led up to his disappearance.
Five days before he went missing, Gonzales filed for a protective order against five extended family members.
He stated in court papers that he did not feel safe, alleging he had been threatened by two male extended family members.
The explanation he states in court papers involves the care of his mother and complaints he filed with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
“I have had to carry an unloaded pistol in my truck hidden because I fear for my life,” he said in an affidavit.
He filed his application for a protective order in state district court in Brownsville on Thursday, July 13.
The following Tuesday, July 18, a sister reported him missing.
His request for a protective order was scheduled to be heard at 9 a.m. today by a judge in Brownsville.
The sister said she was scheduled to meet her brother at 8:30 a.m. that Tuesday outside his law practice in the 1600 block of South F Street.
Gonzales’ truck was parked outside of the office, but when he didn’t show up, his sister called police.
Gonzales stated in his affidavit that he had a confrontation with some family members on June 21, the day he learned his mother had suffered two “mini strokes.”
He said he called a doctor who advised him to call EMS and have his mother taken to the hospital.
“My siblings kept yelling at me that our mother was not going to be taken to the hospital,” he said in the affidavit.
“The EMS arrived at my mother’s residence, went into my mother’s house and came back out to let me know she did not want to be transported to the hospital,” the affidavit says.
Gonzales said he believed his mother was “unduly influenced” by some family members.
“Soon after that my sister, Gloria E. Gonzalez, started to swing at me with her closed fists, and I began to tell her to get back and get out of my face, which she would not do,” the affidavit says.
He states there was another confrontation on June 28, the day after his mother died. He said it occurred at the viewing for his mother at the funeral home.
He states some family members “were apparently upset because of the complaints I had filed with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (Adult Protective Service) and Medicaid fraud.”
But the affidavit does not explain those complaints.
He states his older brother advised him not to enter the lounge at the funeral home because two male extended family members “had threaten (sic) to kick the living daylights out of me.” “But my brother … prevented them from assaulting me,” he states.
The Valley Morning Star called a telephone number listed in court papers for Gloria E. Gonzalez. But the person who answered the phone said it was the wrong number.
Gonzales asked for a court order prohibiting the five family members from getting within 100 feet of him or from going to or near his home and office.
