by ELLEN TUMPOSKY

“A Tucson, Ariz., SWAT team defends shooting an Iraq War veteran 60 times during a drug raid, although it declines to say whether it found any drugs in the house and has had to retract its claim that the veteran shot first.

Vanessa Guerena thought the gunman might be part of a home invasion — especially because two members of her sister-in-law’s family, Cynthia and Manny Orozco, were killed last year in their Tucson home … She shouted for her husband in the next room, and he woke up and told his wife to hide in the closet with the child, Joel, 4.

Guerena grabbed his assault rifle and was pointing it at the SWAT team, which was trying to serve a narcotics search warrant as part of a multi-house drug crackdown, when the team broke down the door.

At first the Pima County Sheriff’s Office said that Guerena fired first, but on Wednesday officials backtracked and said he had not. “The safety was on and he could not fire,” according to the sheriff’s statement.

SWAT team members fired 71 times and hit Guerena 60 times, police said.

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.”

http://abcnews.go.com/US/tucson-swat-team-defends-shooting-iraq-marine-veteran/story?id=13640112

“I’m a former Marine absolutely outraged by this story. The question I have asked and continue to ask is this- why are American citizens being treated this way?

When I was deployed to Afghanistan, we hardly ever did no-knock raids into homes. We get intel on a subject and cordon off the building and knock on the door. Greet the homeowner, and search the home. No one gets shot, no one gets killed, if we find something, we detain the guy.

Here we have police that get questionable intel, kick in the door and just start shooting. It’s absolutely absurd.”

– strikefo