Pembroke Pines raid over marijuana ends with homeowner shot dead
Pembroke Pines police serving a narcotics warrant with their SWAT-style unit at dawn on 12 June 2008 shot dead 46-year-old homeowner Vincent Hodgkiss. The investigation recovered about an ounce and a half of marijuana and led to the arrest of the son's girlfriend.
🇺🇸 Pembroke Pines, Florida · Florida, United States
Pembroke Pines police used their Special Response Team, the department’s SWAT-style unit, to serve a narcoticssearch warrant at the home of 46-year-old Vincent Hodgkiss at 6:30 in the morning of Thursday 12 June 2008, and an officer shot him dead inside.[1][2]Hodgkiss, who held a concealed-weapons permit and had no record of violent crime, had lived in the house for 14 years.[1]
Police sought the warrant on an anonymous complaint of drug dealing, surveillance showing many brief car visits in May and early June, and two searches of Hodgkiss’s rubbish that found handwritten numbers and traces of marijuana; a Broward judge approved it two days before the raid.[2]The attorney for Officer Javier Diaz, who fired the fatal shots, said Diaz shot Hodgkiss twice after Hodgkiss pumped a loaded shotgun, calling it justified self-defence, while police had initially refused to say whether Hodgkiss was armed.[1][2]
As a result of the investigation police recovered about an ounce and a half of marijuana along with weapons, $1,600 in cash, prescription drugs, a digital scale and smoking paraphernalia, and arrested Lisa Ann Jones, 19, the girlfriend of Hodgkiss’s son, on a marijuana charge.[1][2]Deputy Chief David Golt defended using the unit for all narcotics warrants, saying the department serves about 25 drug warrants a year and had not had a fatal police shooting in at least 25 years.[1][3]
Case data
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