Sheriff in Nancy Guthrie Investigation Hit With Eye-Watering 9-Figure Lawsuit Over Another Dept. Disaster
The Pima County Sheriff’s Office and Sheriff Chris Nanos have more to worry about than the approaching 190-day mark since Nancy Guthrie was taken from her home.
Nanos and his department are facing a $176 million lawsuit from an Arizona man who says he is paralyzed after being shot by deputies responding to a swatting call in April, according to the New York Post.
Swatting takes place when police are intentionally summoned to a home when there has been no crime.
The lawsuit said that Axeel Melendez, 24, warned deputies he was a swatting target and posed no threat.
Deputies were called at about 6 a.m. after being told Melendez’s father had shot his sister. Deputies responded, smashed Melendez’s bedroom window with a shovel, and entered the house with guns drawn, the lawsuit claimed.
Melendez heard the noise, told his mother to hide, then took his legally registered gun and cautiously approached the noise. While partially hiding behind a door, police fired seven times, hitting him in the spine and leg, the lawsuit said.
Attorney Dev Sethi said Melendez was worried about swatting threats from an online hacker and contacted deputies.
“The dispatcher told Melendez, ‘They can’t just call SWAT on you. That’s not how it works.’ And assured him that… ‘nothing’s going to happen,’” Sethi said in a statement.
Deputies determined a call summoning them to Melendez’s house was fake and told him, “He should be alright,” a police report said. Police said they would call him if summoned to his address.
Two days later, the call came in that led to Melendez being shot.
“Axeel is a shooting victim whose life will never be the same… He’s not just looking at years of medical treatment and a mountain of hospital bills; his life has been shattered,” Sethi said.
Melendez had been hacked after playing an online video game, according to the Arizona Daily Star.
The lawsuit said Melendez was assured by deputies he had nothing to worry about.
“Since he called law enforcement to get ahead of the false reporting, he should be alright, and that, if any reports come in afterward, we will contact him regarding those reports, and he would just need to let deputies know that he had been a victim of fraud and hacking,” an incident report cited by Melendez’s lawyer said.
But when the April 10 call came in, none of that mattered, the lawsuit said.
“No communications professional or law enforcement officer appropriately recognized or properly responded to any one of the call’s many red flags,” Sethi wrote.
Sethi said that while deputies were en route to Melendez’s house, one deputy alerted them to the fake call and the potential of swatting.
Even after that, the suit said, no attempt was made to reach Melendez.
“The available transcript and CAD, computer-aided dispatch, does not indicate that PCSD dispatch called Axeel’s known phone number or anyone else’s phone number in the home, meaningfully cross-checked the call against the April 8 swatting report before escalating the response, or slowed the response to account for the obvious risk that this was the exact false report Axeel had warned PCSD about,” the claim said.
Sethi said Melendez did everything he was supposed to do.
“He immediately reported the swatting threats against him, he asked the sheriff’s department for help, and he believed PCSD personnel when they promised to keep him safe. The county’s actions left Axeel no choice but to move forward with a Notice of Claim,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit added that deputies ignored indications the call was fake.
Sethi said the call came from a Wisconsin number and that the caller gave inconsistent information. Further, he argued, there were no background sounds that might be expected if the call had been genuine.
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