Falls Church man arrested for shooting three men in Merrifield
Fairfax County Police arrested a Falls Church man who had fired into a crowd of people striking three men in the 7700 block of Lee Highway in Merrifield.
Jorge Armando Melendez Gonzalez, 25, of Falls Church, was arrested late Sunday night by detectives from the Violent Crimes Division with the assistance of the Arlington County Robbery and Homicide Unit. The Arlington SWAT team took the suspect into custody on multiple warrants.
Following the shooting, investigators determined that a man, later identified as Gonzalez, approached a group of men standing in front of Taco Baja at 7716 Lee Highway shortly before 2 a.m. on Aug. 26. During the encounter, one of the men assaulted the suspect. The suspect then opened fire on the group and fled the area on foot.
Officers found two adult men in the parking lot suffering from gunshot wounds. One had been shot in the arm, the other, in the abdomen. Both men were taken to a hospital.
Then at about 3:40 a.m., another man, who had also been in the crowd, walked into the hospital with a gunshot wound to the arm. His injuries were considered non-life threatening, and he was treated and released.
Gonzalez has been charged with three counts of felony malicious wounding and three counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony. He is being held at the Adult Detention Center on no bond.
Police ask anyone with information about this shooting to call 703-246-7800, option 5. Tips can also be submitted anonymously through Crime Solvers.
Gonzalez had been arrested in 2018 along with two other men for grand larceny after being caught with merchandise stolen from Macy’s in Tysons.
UGH! Why did prison officials let him out of prison before this violent crime? Talk about a bad decision. He should’ve stayed in prison for several years.
The simple answer to your question is that keeping shoplifters in jail would have an exorbitant cost to society. The link between shoplifting and violent crime is essentially nonexistent despite the opinion of law enforcement employees. Approximately 9% of the US population has shoplifted at least once in their lives and recent crime reports indicate ~1.4% 1,398 per 100,000) of the US population shoplifted in 2020. Last year 49% of all high school students admitted to shoplifting.
Crime statistics for 2020 show less than 0.3% (279 per 100,000) of the population committed violent crimes and 0.0065% (6.5 per 100,000) committed murder. If all murderers had been shoplifters – which is NOT true – a maximum number of 1 murderer for every 215 shoplifters (~0.46%) would exist on average. Therefore, keeping shoplifters in jail is not a reasonable solution in the long term.
You may want to reconsider your position especially since the potential of locking up a large number of high school students for years would result. Not to mention the $40k per year per prisoner in this country, a cost of $9.5 billion (one year) not including the $3.2 billion to convict each shoplifter.