A lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan attending his first-ever game and his wife had their “whole world turned upside down” when they were brutally attacked in an attempt to break up an argument at AT&T Stadium.
Wenceslao Gonzalez received the tickets to watch his beloved Cowboys face the Baltimore Ravens in Arlington on Sept. 22 as a birthday present from his wife Lindsey and daughter.
“I never thought I’d be able to attend a game,” Gonzalez told KTVT. “For my wife and daughter to be able to do that for me was very special for me.”
After the game ended, the family witnessed a man berating a young woman and they wanted to quell the heated altercation, according to the outlet.
“She was sobbing and she looked scared and she looked very similar to the age of my daughter,” Lindsey Gonzalez said.
Wenceslao Gonzalez was the first to intervene and got into an argument with the man, later identified as 32-year-old Rafael Antonio Ramirez, who punched him in the face.
Ramirez then turned his fury toward Lindsey Gonzalez when she tried to separate the two men.
He allegedly knocked her out with a single punch and kicked her in the face as she lay motionless, the outlet reported citing the Arlington Police.
Gonzalez said she suffered 12 fractures around her left eye, left cheek, and nose and was diagnosed with a broken jaw.
“I know he was in my husband’s face and he had already hit my husband in the face,” she said. “I was trying to separate them. And that’s all I remember. Next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital.”
She was pictured lying in a hospital bed with her left eye covered as her right eye could barely open because of the swelling.
She underwent surgery on Sept. 24, Wenceslao Gonzalez said.
Wenceslao Gonzalez suffered a fractured foot, according to a GoFundMe page organized by the couple’s daughter Emma.
Emma Gonzalez said her parents have been out of work since the incident.
Ramirez, 32, was arrested and charged with two counts of assault causing bodily harm after the attack.
He bailed out of Tarrant County Jail on Sept. 23, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The relationship between Ramirez and the woman was unclear.
Lindsey Gonzalez wants justice brought to her alleged attacker for what he did to her family.
“I never wish bad upon anybody or want to see any harm come to anybody,” she claimed. “I do want him to pay for what he’s done though, and I want it to be fair and just. Our whole world has been turned upside down. Our lives may never be the same after this.”
The Gonzalez’s are saying the first Cowboys game they attended will be their last, as they don’t feel safe inside the $1.15 billion stadium, which opened in 2009.
“I never want to go back there,” Lindsey Gonzalez said.
The family questioned why it took forever for law enforcement to arrive at the altercation.
“It was just really frustrating that there wasn’t more police presence, there wasn’t security around to do the job that they were supposed to be doing,” the couple’s daughter Emma Hernandez said.
Last year, a bloody brawl broke out between Jets and Cowboys fans inside the stadium.
Multiple fights took place throughout the concourse during the regular season game as police escorted the bloodied and battered fans from the chaotic scene.
