Pima County Sheriff Deputies kill Marine
This details of this story are changing as we speak, so I’m withholding judgement on anyone. But anyway former 26-year-old Marine Jose Guerena was woken by his wife Vanessa when she saw the shadow of a man with a gun in her window. Jose sent her and her their son to a closet to hide and he grabbed his AR-15 rifle and headed to the front door.
Vanessa claims she didn’t hear sirens or shouts from the deputies identifying themselves, but when they broke down the door, they found Jose in a firing stance. One deputy fired and hit the door frame spraying wood chips over the other officers who then thought they were being fired at, so they opened fire with 71 rounds killing Jose. The officers claim that Jose was killed instantly while his wife claims he was still breathing when officers dragged her from the house.
Officers initially claimed that Jose Guerena fired first and they’ve since recanted that statement saying he hadn’t fired at all. That there was a round in the chamber, but that the weapon was on “safe”.
The officers were serving a search warrant. Rumors are that they had the wrong address. Guerena had a few traffic tickets, but no criminal record by all accounts.
He served two tours in Iraq;
Guerena was a Tucson native and Flowing Wells High School graduate. He joined the U.S. Marines in 2002. He served two tours in Iraq in 2003 and 2005 as part of the Yuma-based MWSS-173 under direct supervision of Master Sgt. Leo Verdugo.
Verdugo was with Guerena’s family Tuesday afternoon. He gave them a Marine Corps jacket and gloves to use at Guerena’s burial.
“He was an excellent Marine, with a bright future ahead of him,” Verdugo said.
Lew Rockwell is on the case, so i don’t know what to think.
If anyone in the Tucson area knows more details, please fill us in.
Thanks to StrikeFO for the link.
Category: The Guerena Killing
I’m not inclined to blame the cops going through the door, those guys deal with life and death everyday. If I went through a door on a high risk warrant and saw a dude in a shooting stance with a rifle I’d shoot him too.
That said if you hit the wrong house and it gets some innocent, law abiding citizen killed people’s jobs should be over. The guy who gave the green light on this raid needs to be turning his gear in.
I’ll wait before I pass judgement…I know the media usually gets about 50% of the info screwed up…
However, my first impression is that the deputies might have made a bigfuckingmistake!
I was a cop for 32 years, but I don’t know everything.
Oh shit… We all how this will play out. Just another crazy combat vet…
71 rounds sound like a lot. I don’t know how many people were in that living room – if there were 71 cops and they each fired once, that’s probably acceptable. But if there were ten who each fired seven times, well, that’s starting to be a bit excessive.
Jonn #4:
Can’t say I follow Lew Rockwell as a routine matter (YMMV), but this WILL play out as I suggested without his endorsement. Can’t say I wholly disagree with him in this case either.
C’mon… the anti-gun crowd be all over this like stink on shit. Defending yourself, in your home?? Even I’m not paranoid enough to start yelling conspiracy, but…
Just want to point out- Pima County Sherriff’s… aka Sherrif Dupnik…
maybe it was all that “violent and hateful rhetoric on talk radio” that set off the SWAT team to shoot the man 71 times.
Well, I’m certainly torn on this one as a Marine and a 25 yr cop. Not knowing the true facts, if the department says there was one in the pipe and the safety was on…oops, big oh shit! And if they got the wrong address, somebody just stepped on their dick and better be turning in their 782 gear. It would’nt be the first time some idiot did’nt take note of East/West/North or South and some judge or commander did’nt confirm. As of now until further facts come out my sympathy lies with the family. Semper Fi Marine, Fair Winds and Following Seas…RIP.
And, as we know it at this point, (Caveat), I also sympathize with the cop in the doorway who was just a small part of a team. It wasn’t up to him to know the address, and he will have to live with this. Team leader though, quite another story.
Makes me sick to my stomach.
I give rise cops no excuses, 71 times shot, and what no procedure for indentifying your self as police swat or whatever, what happened to knocking on door identifying yourself. Before pretending your military raiders assaulting a bunker. That would be considered a bad shoot in special tactics world talk very skiddish Tucson. I’m not gonna let it go easy when I fellow warrior who fought for this country dies from freaking idiots.
Chris Sims: not trying to defend either side without more information, but there are “no knock” warrants where the police go in rapidly without asking permission if there is judged to be significant danger from the occupant. Whether or not this particular warrant was a no knock isn’t clear or if he just didn’t hear the police, since it sounds like he was asleep at the time.
If this turns out to be as written, then there are some people that not only need to lose thier jobs, but perhaps spend a little time in the jug for negligence.
I’m not going bust the balls of the entry team too hard, however, I won’t let them completely off the hook, since, as has been mentioned, there were 71 shots fired. How many does it take to fire 71? Maybe 3, especially if you have 30+ round magazines (not clips for you people on the left), depending on your tactical gear, and that little selector switch that says safe/semi/auto and if it’s in the auto position, 71 rounds would probably be about right.
An incident similar to this happened a few years ago here in the Mpls/St.Paul Metro area, but fortunately for all involved, no one was injured on either side. A guy protecting his family in his house, just as this Marine was.
Cops/supervisors/judges are not superhuman ultra-professionals that never make mistakes. They are like everyone else; human. I can probably bet that the officers involved in this feel about as low as a person can feel.
I looked around and found a press release, (take it for what it is worth), that says that drug conspiracy information was found in the house. The incident happened there, and we are here, so all we can do is play with a tiny bit of information, and try to shape it to fit our argument. We are much to distant to have any assurance of getting the facts.
Cops claim an announcement was made, and as I read it, the event happened around 9AM, surely “broad daylight” in Southern Arizona.
Two thoughts, which I believe are valid regardless of any late breaking facts in the case:
First, we all have the right to bear arms and the right to defend our homes. If Guerena had put 71 rounds down range at the first sight of a presumably hostile individual with a firearm (i.e. the figure his wife saw through the window) what are the chances that he’d be sitting at home awaiting the outcome of the investigation? I believe this holds true even if he hadn’t killed anyone. I’m not even going to wait for the final report to assume that there are nowhere near 71 entry wounds in the body and that there will be no official censure for the reckless disregard shown for the lives of everyone who may have found themselves a little bit of drywall and siding away from a bullet.
Secondly, if Guerena had been a foreign national narco terrorist discovered by federal agents, there’s a chance he’d be in a hospital nursing bruises from beanbag rounds instead of in the morgue.
If they broke into his house without identifying themselves, then opened fire without provocation this is indeed a case of neglegent homicide.
The constitution protects us from unwaranted search and seisure. Thats why they have to have a search warrant and yell search warrant before entering.
If these guys got lazy or denied this marine his constitutional right by not identifying themselves intentionally there should be hell to pay.
Notice all the ifs we need more information here.
By intentional I mean they served a no knock warrant. They don’t knock because they believe the resident is armed and dangerous.
I think all no knock warrants are unconstitutional.
FO in #13; that’s great and all, but if they admitted they had the wrong house to begin with, any “evidence” they found wouldn’t justify their actions. Ask any lawyer what happens to evidence collected without a proper search warrant.
Granted, the cops say they said something on the way in, but if you’re trying to CYA, of course you identified yourself on the way in.
I hope that Pima County’s insurance is paid up, because the wrongful death lawsuit that’s coming their way is gonna be a doozy.
Pima County is also trying to secede from the Union.
Lawless county = lawless Officers of the Law.
There has been, continues to be, and will continue to be no excuse for failure to execute a no-knock raid. This procedures has killed far too many innocent people. And the target of the raid? Disposes of the evidence and slips away in the chaos. You can’t get this stupid even in a Michael Moore movie.
VOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER CHARGES ALL ROUND.
At a minimum USMC Steve. Should be murder charges. They behaved like undisciplined trigger happy %^&%s.
Yet we “civilians” are told that we’re the undisciplined trigger happy %^&%s.
71 shots fired sure does sound trigger happy to me.
I would sure like to see that warrant; it sounds like they were expecting about half a cartel to meet them at the door.
Love the cops, but if you can’t go through a door without shooting before identifying a proper threat and are so scared when you show up that you need to empty a mag x 3 times, rather than selectively engaging a target, maybe you should find another line of work. Compare this response to that of the operators (at least as reported) who took down bin Laden – first through door pushed daughter out of way, second same for his wife and third killed bin Laden.
Zero #5 – regarding your comment “defending yourself in your own home…”
Apparently, in Indiana, the courts there say you don’t have a right to do that anymore. Check it out: http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_ec169697-a19e-525f-a532-81b3df229697.html One of the judges on the panel said “…a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.” Yikes. “modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence” sounds a little like “police state.”
It’s hard to justify this even if disputed facts are viewed in light most favorable to the officers. Not only should their careers be over, but they should be prosecuted for homicide.
[…] posts at This Ain’t Hell. Oh, and the police claimed they came in with sirens blaring: the neighbors never heard a thing until the gunfire erupted. The cops screwed up and then they lied about it. The records of the raid have been sealed by the […]
What is wrong with this picture. Every American has the right to have one or more guns in his house. It isn’t a privilege like driving a car is, it is a right. The Marine didn’t fire a shot. One moment he is home sleeping the next he is dead after being shot by multiple police officers.
Would any of us go to sleep in our own home tonight if we knew the same thing was going to happen to us? This was a law abiding citizen. The police have given no evidence of ANY wrong doing. This is a soldier shot in cold blood in the country he risked his life to protect. Our laws say we owe him.
I hope the media hounds this until every person is held accountable.
Pima County is trying to seceded from Arizona, not the United States of America. They want to call it Baja Arizona. I say, if that is the kind of place they want to live, they should just move to SoCal.
Sheriff Dupnik has been hiding behind his spokesman and has issued at least 5 different stories. That is dramatically different than the January shooting when he was unavoidable for comments maligning anyone and anything even slightly to the right of his insane politics. He called AZ SB1070 “racist” and “disgusting”. That’s right. It’s “disgusting” to enforce immigration laws.
I think alot of the fault is with the intel. Wrong person? Wrong house? Dead citizen.
On the other hand, the helmet cam (vid and audio) doesn’t record anyone saying “Search Warrant” or “police” before, during, or after kicking in the door. In fact, one person turns back and demands the siren be turned off.