Oscar Belgal is the 28-year-old Dominican man ICE shot in the neck on a Bronx street Thursday. A former neighbor now tells the New York Post he terrorized their Washington Heights building with a machete.
The man, also Dominican, stayed anonymous for safety. He told the Post he once watched Belgal pull a machete on another resident’s nephew in a fight outside the building last year. He said he also watched Belgal dodge ICE agents by climbing down one of the building’s fire escapes.
He’s a menace to society.
Belgal’s former neighbor
The feds believe Belgal slipped into the country with a 2022 migrant caravan and has ties to the Trinitarios street gang. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch says his record includes a 2023 robbery arrest, pleaded down to fourth-degree grand larceny, and an August 2025 arrest for allegedly selling fentanyl, cocaine and heroin. That case is still open, he has pleaded not guilty, and he told officials he is not in a gang.
Not everyone in the building remembers him that way. One older resident said she never heard anything bad about him. Another said: “He wasn’t a hard working person, I’ll put it that way. He was in the streets doing crazy things.” A barber an avenue away said he was glad Belgal is in custody.
He was the one who got shot, but what if the child had been killed?
Melvin, a neighborhood barber
Belgal left the hospital at 9:58 p.m. Thursday. ICE took him to Delaney Hall in Newark, then to the MDC in Brooklyn on Friday. On Saturday, protesters marched in Midtown demanding justice for him and the end of ICE.
The mayor called him a New Yorker. His old neighbor called him a menace. The courts get the next word.
SEE ALSO:
ICE Agent Shoots and Wounds a Man in the Bronx
The Mayor Spent Two Hours on the Phone With Trump Trying to Free the Man ICE Shot in the Bronx. It Did Not Work
The NYPD Released Its Bodycam Video From the Bronx ICE Shooting. It Does Not Show the Shooting.