On 13 April 2015, United States Bureau of Land Management agents flying over Sacramento County spotted two large illegal marijuana grow sites in and near the Stone Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, and a multi-agency Marijuana Enforcement Team planned a raid for 29 April to arrest any suspects and eradicate the crop.[1] At the briefing, officers were told such sites were typically run for trafficking organisations in Mexico, that handguns, rifles, booby traps and toxic chemicals were often present, and that this site had twice before been guarded by armed men.[1]
State game warden Brian Boyd and his K9 partner, together with sheriff’s deputies and a federal agent, beached their boat south of the grow inside the refuge at about 5:50 a.m. and waded through mud and dense foliage toward a clearing planted with marijuana.[1][2] Boyd spotted Luis Chavez-Diaz crouching about ten yards away holding a revolver in a two-handed stance, tracking the officers as they moved.[1] Boyd and a deputy shouted for him to drop the gun in English and Spanish, but Chavez-Diaz kept his stance and kept tracking them, and Boyd, believing he was about to kill one of them, fired three times.[1]
Chavez-Diaz fell, still holding the gun, and resisted handcuffing before officers found him gravely wounded; they applied a chest seal, but firefighters pronounced him dead at the scene.[1] The refuge is a 6,550-acre park with persistent large-scale grows despite raids in 2012 and 2013, and officers used a helicopter to haul out the plants along with pesticides, fertilizer and rat poison.[3] The gun was a .22-calibre revolver loaded with six rounds, with seven more rounds in his pockets, and the coroner found gunshot wounds to the chest and a graze to the head.[1] The district attorney concluded Boyd acted lawfully in defence of himself and three colleagues and took no further action.[1]
