Opinion ID: 202688
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Scene of the Crime

Text: 2 On May 9, 2003, at approximately 5:45 p.m., Agents Héctor Valentín and Nelson González-Rodríguez of the Puerto Rico Police Department's Special Arrests and Extraditions Division established surveillance of a residence in the Río Grande area of northeastern Puerto Rico, in relation to two local felony arrest warrants for García-Carrasquillo and a fugitive arrest warrant for Claudio-García. 1 The split-level house consisted of the main residence on the upper level, and a small ground-level apartment accessed by a door under a carport at the front of the house. The carport stood over a driveway that led to a gate and then out to the road in front of the house. The agents parked their unmarked car on the road approximately 100 meters up a hill from the house, where they could observe activity around the house with binoculars. From their vantage point, they could see a Ford Bronco parked under the carport at the front of the house. They could not see the door to the ground-level apartment located behind the Bronco, nor could they see a short staircase on the left side of the carport. 2 They could, however, see the staircase leading to the main entrance on the upper level of the house. 3 Around two hours later, a stolen Mazda Protegé 3 pulled up and parked on the road in front of the house, outside a gate across the driveway. García-Carrasquillo and Claudio-García exited the vehicle and entered the carport, presumably to enter the ground-level apartment at the rear of the carport, though it is unclear whether the agents actually saw the men enter, or later exit, through the door to the apartment. 4 Fifteen minutes later, García-Carrasquillo walked out from under the carport carrying an assault rifle, which he placed in the trunk of the Mazda Protegé. He then returned to the carport. 4 At this point, the agents notified their supervisor, Lieutenant Herminio Díaz, of the situation. Lieutenant Díaz mobilized the SWAT team and posted two agents, José Nevárez Ortiz and Richard Carrera, at the back of the house. As the SWAT team approached the house, José David Cruz-González, the owner of the house, who was somewhere outside the gate across the driveway in front of the house, 5 ran through the gate toward the house shouting that the police were there. The three co-defendants in the case, García-Carrasquillo, Claudio-García, and González-Rivera, then ran out of the ground-level apartment and joined Cruz-González in fleeing towards the back of the house. 5 At the back of the house, the four men jumped over a fence and continued to run. Agent Nevárez shouted for the men to stop and told them they were under arrest. The fleeing men and the officers then exchanged gunfire; González-Rivera was shot in the leg. The men continued to run and exchange gunfire with the pursuing police until the four men fell into a large hole in the ground, 6 where they were apprehended and arrested. The three co-defendants were each found with loaded firearms on their persons; however, no drugs or paraphernalia were found on any of the defendants at the time of their arrest. 6 Meanwhile, back at the house, the SWAT team, Lieutenant Díaz, and Agent Valentín searched the ground-level apartment, where they found a large amount of cocaine and cocaine base (crack cocaine), a small amount of marijuana, and assorted drug paraphernalia, including a stove for cooking crack cocaine and items used to break up cocaine rocks. The cocaine base was packaged in approximately 972 vials, which were placed in plastic bags labeled by drug distribution point. The Mazda Protegé was taken to the police station after the arrest; when the police opened the trunk, they found an AR-15 rifle along with the AK-47 that the agents had seen García-Carrasquillo put there during their surveillance. The police did not take any fingerprints from the drugs, paraphernalia, or firearms recovered from the apartment or the vehicle, nor from the firearms found on the defendants at the time of their arrest.