A Pima County SWAT team serving a search warrant shot and killed 26-year-old Jose Guerena, an Iraq war veteran, at his Tucson home on the morning of 5 May 2011.[1] Guerena confronted the intruders with a rifle in his hand; his wife Vanessa and their young child, hiding inside from people they first took for intruders, were unharmed.[1] Five officers fired 71 rounds in about seven seconds, striking Guerena 22 times.[2] The raid was one of four simultaneous house searches that morning targeting items investigators believed were linked to drug trafficking and home invasions.[2]
The first police account said Guerena had opened fire on the team with a long rifle.[1] Six days later police admitted that the rifle’s safety was on and he had not fired it.[1] A later release of records showed about $100,000 in cash, marijuana and firearms seized that morning across the four houses searched, including $94,000 in a shoebox and a bag of marijuana at the home of Guerena’s brother Alejandro.[3] No drugs were found at Jose Guerena’s own house, and no arrests were made in the raids.[3]
A $3.4 million settlement
Vanessa Guerena sued, alleging negligence from the signing of the warrant through the shooting and the wait of more than an hour before her husband received medical treatment.[2] In September 2013 Pima County and its excess insurer agreed with three other agencies whose officers served on the regional SWAT team to pay the family $3.4 million: $2.35 million from the county and its insurer, $720,000 from Marana, $260,000 from Oro Valley and $100,000 from Sahuarita.[2] The county’s administrator called it a calculated risk-management settlement, and the sheriff’s department said its officers had acted in line with their training and recognised standards while settling to avoid the cost and unpredictability of trial.[2] The settlement admitted no wrongdoing.[2]
