Four points:
1) That’s a well-cared-for smaller home with nice furnishings. Looks like a nicely-kept starter home to me. From my conversations with cops, most criminals’ homes are not nearly this tidy.
Could this be your house, dear reader? I think it could.
2) Look at the photo showing the deputy’s position in the door and a deputy standing at Guerena’s position in the hall. Maybe 15 yards at most. Seems that Guerena is plainly visible, even with the light source coming from the open door.
I am suddenly very grateful my house does not have an interior hallway lined up with the front door in which I might be the focus of an amped officer’s tunnel vision.
3) Look at the huge number of bullet holes in the wall. Look at the corresponding holes in the master bedroom on the other side.
Even had he not had his whole body in the hallway, Guerena had no cover of any sort. We all know this, but the graphic depiction of applied government power is sobering, to say the least.
4) If Guerena’s blood-spattered AR is any indication, he was an ARFCommer.
What might have saved Guerena’s life? An armor-plated barrier door in the hallway or at the entrance to his master bedroom, and the ability to communicate with people on the other side of it. Nothing less.
EDITED TO ADD: a fifth point. 5) Jose Guerena was targeted because his relatives had criminal records and were suspects in criminal activity, and he owned firearms and body armor that could have been used in that activity.
Well, I, too, have relatives with criminal records, own far more firearms than he did, and if you count my $35 surplus German flak jackets, I have more body armor than he did as well. How many of you can say the same?
I’ve still got all my deuce gear from Desert Storm, including my flak jacket and helmet. Not to mention my firearms. Don’t know about relatives that have records – none that I know of.
But still …
I took the opposite impression from that same photo, based on the fact that the officers would have just come in from outside on what appeared to be a very bright day – I don’t think they had time for their eyes to adjust to the darker interior before they started shooting.
Re: body armor – I have a non-military, non-LEO friend who owned body armor because his job with a private ambulance service frequently took him to some of the less upscale areas of Richmond – where it’s not unheard of for people to shoot at ambulances. He also had a large firearms collection. This could have been him.
Realistically, anyone with two brain cells to rub together would not think it unusual for a marine vet to have body armor – remember back in the early days of Iraq/Afghanistan, when people were buying armor for their loved ones because the military couldn’t issue it fast enough? I bet almost all of them brought that armor back. Those allegations are the PCSO trying to cover their backsides by smearing the victim. Nothing more.
So, there are criminals in that family, and they shoot the one who isn’t a criminal.
And even if he were some criminal mastermind, this still smells like a bad shoot.
That’s the second big problem: even if the guy was guilty of something, they effed up the operation. Badly. And by changing their stories every day or two, they’re making it look worse.
Looked over at Ayoob’s column, and I’ve got news for him: I’ve worked 12-hour shifts(though not in a place as strenuous as a copper mine). When I’d get home I’d want to maybe eat a bite, clean up and go to bed. Where I’d lay down and pass out. I would probably have slept through that ‘high-decibel siren wail that lasted for several seconds’; if it DID wake me up, I’d have been half-conscious wondering when that asshole would shut his car alarm off.
I’ve had people knock on the front door and I never heard it; other times I did but had no idea what it was, if it was an actual noise or something from a dream, I’d never have heard some guy saying ‘Police’ outside. But them breaking in my door, oh yeah, that’d wake me up. And I’d have been grabbing the scattergun.
Which the latter would probably- to these clowns at least- ‘prove’ that I’m a crook of some kind.