I mentioned this case earlier in the week. The Tuscon, AZ police SWAT team, in what may have been a case of mistaken identity, burst into Guerena’s house in a raid. Guerena, in the interest of defending his wife and young child from unknown assailants, grabbed his assault rifle and confronted the intruders. One of the SWAT team members accidentally fired his weapon, which the rest of the team misinterpreted as Guerena firing upon them. They unloaded 71 shots; Guerena was hit 60 times.
Originally, the police claimed that Guerena had fired on them. They later retracted that when it was discovered that one of the team members discharged his weapon accidentally. The safety on Guerena’s weapon was never taken off.
All this is bad enough; somebody needs to be held accountable for what happened. Today, I read an ABC News story from Friday that paramedics, who were on the scene within two minutes, were not allowed into the house to tend to Guerena for an HOUR, virtually assuring his death.
In a frantic 911 call, Vanessa Guerena begged for medical help for her husband. “He’s on the floor!” she said, crying, to the 911 operator. “Can you please hurry up?”
Asked if law enforcement was inside or outside the house, she told the operator, according to a transcript of the call, that they were inside. “They were … going to shoot me. And I put my kid in front of me.”
A report by ABC News affiliate KGUN found that more than an hour had passed before the SWAT team let the paramedics work on Guerena. By then he was dead.
A spokesman for Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said he could not discuss whether any drugs had been found at the home or make any other comment. “We’re waiting for the investigation to be complete,” he said.
In a statement, the sheriff’s office criticized the media, saying that while questions will inevitably be raised, “It is unacceptable and irresponsible to couch those questions with implications of secrecy and a coverup, not to mention questioning the legality of actions that could not have been taken without the approval of an impartial judge.”
Don’t you just love that last paragraph? The sheriff’s office criticized the media… There may turn out to be circumstances, that have not yet been revealed, that point to some justification for the SWAT team raid on Guarena’s home. But there can’t be any justification for what happened after they went in.
The reason I pointed out this case in the first place was in conjunction with the Indiana Supreme Court decision that says you no longer have right to resist a police invasion in your home, whether it’s legal or not. Hmmmm. Put these two things together, and the police can get away with just about anything.
Read the rest of the ABC story
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