“One officer fired shots at the pit bull that hurtled out of the mobile home in Southaven, Miss.,” washingtonpost.com reports. “The other officer fired at the person pointing a gun from behind the cracked front door.” Fair enough, right? Only . . .
They had been trying to serve an arrest warrant in an aggravated assault case at a mobile home in the neighborhood before the sudden explosion of gunfire Sunday night. When they surveyed the aftermath, they made a heart-dropping discovery: They were at the wrong home.
According to the official version [via commercialappeal.com], the killer cops didn’t just bust in and start firing at the auto mechanic.
“A man pointed a gun at officers through an open door,” [District Attorney John] Champion said. The officers repeatedly warned [41-year-old Ismael Lopez] to put the gun down before one of them opened fire. He said he believed that one officer shot at the dog, while the other shot at the man.
Fair enough, right? Only . . .
[Family friend, Jordan] Castillo said the slain man’s wife was too upset to talk, but that she’d told him things that contradicted the official account. He said Lopez had two guns: a Glock pistol, which he usually kept in the bedroom, and a .22 caliber rifle, which he usually kept in the front room.
He said Lopez’s wife told him that after the shooting, the rifle was in its usual spot.
And Castillo pointed to a hole in the porch banister and holes in the front door, saying that they indicated the shots had been fired through a closed door. “If you’re shooting through a door in that manner, you don’t know who’s behind that door.”
He said he couldn’t imagine that Lopez would have come out aiming a gun at police. “It don’t make sense at all.”
He also said Lopez spoke good English and would not have misunderstood commands to put down a gun – but he said Lopez’s wife reported not hearing such commands.
There’s no word whether or not the cops announced themselves before the fatal encounter. According to the DA, the Southhaven po-po don’t have body cameras. So . . .
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: a little courtesy from The Boys in Blue goes a long way to preventing these sorts of incidents.
Is it too much to ask cops to knock on a door of a suspected perp? And if a suspect is thought to be violent, why not wait until he or she comes out of their house/workplace before attempting apprehension?