A Merced Police Department bomb squad safely detonated a suspected explosive device at a Dos Palos property on Thursday, November 12, after a man wanted over a violent attack on his ex-girlfriend surrendered there following a high-speed chase and a 30-minute standoff, the Madera County Sheriff's Office said.
Source: Merced Sun-Star (via Merced Neighbors)
The man, Gordon McCarty Jr., 52, of Dos Palos, was booked into the Madera County Jail on suspicion of torture, robbery, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, domestic violence and attempted homicide, according to the sheriff's office. He was also wanted on a probation violation warrant. These are allegations made at booking, not convictions: McCarty has not been convicted of the new charges, and he is presumed innocent unless and until a court finds otherwise.
Source: Madera County Sheriff's Office (official Facebook post, Nov 13, 2026)
The November 1 attack that started the search
Deputies had been looking for McCarty since November 1, when a woman reported that her ex-boyfriend had violently attacked her in Madera County, the sheriff's office said. The office said the woman suffered several significant injuries, and it identified McCarty as the ex-boyfriend. The sheriff's office has not said exactly where in Madera County the November 1 attack happened, and the woman has not been named in the reporting — Awaaz Punjab does not name her either.
Source: Merced Sun-Star (via Merced Neighbors)
Tracked to a Fresno County home, then a high-speed chase
On November 12, Madera County detectives tracked McCarty to a home on North Russell Avenue, south of South Dos Palos, in Fresno County. When detectives and deputies arrived to serve a search warrant, McCarty drove off at high speed, according to the sheriff's office.
Source: Merced Sun-Star (via Merced Neighbors)
The sheriff's office plane, Falcon 1, followed him from overhead. No patrol cars were directly behind him, the office said, but he kept driving recklessly at high speeds as the aircraft tracked him toward Dos Palos.
Source: Merced Sun-Star (via Merced Neighbors)
The 30-minute standoff off Center Avenue
McCarty stopped at a home off Center Avenue, south of Eucalyptus Road, in Dos Palos. Madera County deputies, the Merced County Sheriff's Office and Dos Palos police surrounded the property and ordered him to come out. After about 30 minutes, McCarty walked out of a mobile trailer on the property and surrendered without further incident, the sheriff's office said. Aerial photographs released by the sheriff's office show deputies taking a man in a red shirt into custody beside marked sheriff's vehicles on a rural road.
Source: Madera County Sheriff's Office (official Facebook post, Nov 13, 2026)
Guns, ammunition — and a suspected explosive — found in the search
After McCarty surrendered, detectives searched the Center Avenue property. They found several guns and ammunition, and they found a suspected explosive device, the sheriff's office said. The Merced Police Department's bomb squad came to the property and safely detonated the device. The sheriff's office has not said what the device was.
Source: Merced Sun-Star (via Merced Neighbors)
The sheriff's office booked McCarty on suspicion of torture, robbery, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, domestic violence and attempted homicide, and he was also wanted on a probation violation warrant. He has not been convicted of these charges, and the sheriff's office did not announce a court date.
Why three counties' agencies were all at one Dos Palos arrest
Dos Palos is a small farming city in Merced County, in California's San Joaquin Valley, close to the Fresno County and Madera County lines and to the Highway 33 and Highway 152 corridors. That geography is written all over this arrest: the underlying case belongs to Madera County, the chase began at a home in Fresno County, it ended in Merced County's Dos Palos — whose own police department joined the surrounding of the property — and the bomb squad came from the Merced Police Department. Multi-agency responses like this are routine in the rural Valley, where small city departments and neighbouring sheriff's offices back each other up on high-risk arrests.
The Central Valley is also home to one of the largest Punjabi communities in the United States — farm families, business owners and truck drivers spread from Fresno through Merced, Modesto and Stockton. A high-risk arrest involving a chase, a standoff and a bomb-squad detonation in a small Valley city is the kind of local public-safety news that travels fast through those communities, which is why Awaaz Punjab covers Valley policing at city level.
What happens next
McCarty is in the Madera County Jail. The sheriff's office did not say when he is due in court, so the next confirmed steps to watch are his first court appearance, the Madera County prosecutors' decision on which of the booked allegations to file as formal charges, and any further statement from the sheriff's office identifying the suspected device its detectives found. The investigation into the November 1 attack and the Center Avenue property continues. Awaaz Punjab will update this story when the sheriff's office or the court releases more.