Thursday, cops raided a home in Wilmer, Alabama looking for a wanted man. A woman inside the home who allegedly pointed a shotgun at the officers was shot when, they say, she refused to drop the firearm.
According to Fox10 . . .
“As agents went up to the house they detained two men outside, who said there was a woman still inside. As they went to make entry into the house… This lady had armed herself with a shotgun and the entry team was giving her orders to drop the gun, put the gun down, drop the gun several times — over a period of a few seconds it seems like… And there is video recordings of that. She didn’t and she pointed the gun at one of them — then two or three agents fired upon her striking her three or four times,” said Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran.
The biggest problem with this entire operation: the wanted man the cops were looking for used to live at the home they raided, but no longer. Actually, he was already in jail.
Sheriff Cochran (above) said the whole mixup was due to a “miscommunication.”
Here’s the AP’s account . . .
Officers who mistakenly entered a home trying to arrest an Alabama man who was already in jail shot a woman who was inside, news outlets reported.
Ann Rylee, 19, was wounded during the raid on Thursday, television news outlets quoted family members as saying. They said she was hospitalized and was expected to survive.
Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran told WALA-TV that officers shot Rylee after she pointed a shotgun at them. He said a “miscommunication” led to officers being at the home in the first place.
Mobile County sheriff’s deputies joined federal officers at a home in the Wilmer community looking for Nicholas McLeod, who used to live there. Jail records show he was actually arrested a day earlier on charges including possession of drug paraphernalia and evidence tampering.
A nephew, Christopher McLeod, told news outlets he was outside the house emptying the trash with a friend before work when multiple officers armed with rifles and wearing body armor pulled up in vehicles and demanded that they put up their hands.
“They were looking for someone who used to live at that house years ago. He was my uncle,” McLeod said.
McLeod said he told them Rylee, his fiancée, was inside the house asleep in a recliner in the living room, where they kept a shotgun for protection. Two federal marshals who had approached the home started yelling “gun” and fired multiple times, he said.
“They had us face down in the dirt outside the whole time this was going on,” McLeod said.
McLeod said Rylee was shot multiple times and underwent surgery.
“I just hope she’s OK. That’s my No. 1,” McLeod said. “It’s just so unfortunate because none of this needed to happen, it had nothing to do with us. We’re just victims of an unfortunate situation.”
The sheriff said it wasn’t clear why officers didn’t know that the person they were looking for already was in jail.
“We do know that there is a miscommunication in this situation. We don’t know the exact cause. We have narrowed it down to one of two things,” he said.
Officers shot the woman after she refused orders to drop the shotgun, he said.
“If she would not have pointed a gun at the agents they would have determined all that on the scene and would have bid her a ‘good day and thank you very much,’” Cochran said.