Around midnight today, Dallas police received a call about a man walking around West 10th Street in Oak Cliff, "wielding a large knife," as the police report puts it. The caller said the man with the knife had, furthermore, phoned him up not long ago and said, "I'm going to kill your dogs."
According to the report, the caller directed officers Mark Merenda and Terrance Hopkins to the apartment of the man in question, Kenneth Gonzaba, 46. They knocked.
"Who is it?" Gonzaba inquired.
"It's the Dallas Police," one of the officers responded.
"Fuck the police," Gonzaba replied through the door.
The officers suggested that Gonzaba step outside.
"I'll come outside," he replied, "But you ain't ready for what I got for you."
What he had for them was a rather large knife, about 18 inches in length, "with a wood handle and a jagged blade." It was "raised over his head, in his right hand, in a menacing manner."
The officers "believed the arrestee intended to cause them bodily harm," the report continues. Both drew their guns and gave Gonzaba "loud commands to drop the knife and lay on the ground."
Gonzaba dropped the knife but did not lay on the ground. So one of the officers "used a front kick to the thigh area" to get him there. Gonzaba was arrested and taken to Lew Sterrett, where he is charged with two counts of aggravated assault against a public servant. His bail has been set at $50,000.
Gonzaba is the manager at Lockhart Smokehouse, and has no prior criminal record in Dallas County. Asked for comment on Twitter by a reporter from the Dallas Morning News, whoever mans their account replied, "Oh no. Kenny is a valuable employee. We will keep an eye on the situation as it develops."
This appears to have been a night for bizarre and violent police incidents. Around the same time, a 30-year-old man being interviewed by police about a "disturbance" at a convenience store near Uptown turned around and fled from them "for unknown reasons," a police report says. The man jumped over a concrete barrier and plummeted onto North Central Expressway, where he died at the scene.
