SWAT Team Kills Marine Veteran at Home

By TIM HULL
Courthouse News Service
Nov. 04, 2011

TUCSON (CN) - A widow says a regional SWAT team killed her husband, a Marine veteran, in a botched raid not even aimed at him, riddling their house with 72 bullets while she and their 4-year-old son were in it.

Vanessa Guerena says police refused to allow paramedics to help her husband, 26-year-old Jose Guerena, after the SWAT team shot him repeatedly while serving a search warrant on May 5.

"No shots were ever fired at members of the Pima Regional SWAT Team from inside the Guerena home," the widow says in her Pima County Court complaint. She says her husband was "peacefully sleeping in his bed" after returning home from the night shift at a mine when the police killed him.

"After the shooting, the Pima Regional SWAT Team denied entry to anyone, including paramedics, into the Guerena home for over an hour."

The raid apparently was aimed at her husband's brother, who did not live with them.

Guerena says that the affidavit in support of the search warrant "misrepresented and failed to include complete and material information about Joseph Guerena."

The complaint states: "The Pima Regional SWAT Team was serving a warrant based on an alleged investigation into the activities of Jose Guerena's brother, Alejandro Guerena, who was not a resident of Jose Guerena's home. No evidence was found that Jose Guerena was engaging in criminal activity, that any criminal activity was occurring at Jose Guerena's home, or that any evidence of criminal activity would be found in the Guerena home."

Read More