A Massachusetts family said that they feared for their lives when a SWAT team erroneously entered their home last week with guns drawn, CBS Boston reports.
Marianne Diaz, who lives in the home with her fiance, Bryant Alequin, and her two daughters, ages 7 and 18 months, said that she prayed and tried to protect her girls while Worcester, Mass., police and state police troopers fulfilled a search warrant.
“It was terrorizing, and the worst thing I’ve ever been through in my life. They were loud, vulgar and disgusting in behavior,” she told the news station.
Last Wednesday around 5:30 a.m., while Alequin was getting ready for work, officers reportedly entered the home. Alequin said he was put in handcuffs and that they were “very tight, and it was ugly.”
“I was scared, honestly,” he told CBS Boston.
In the end, however, it turns out that officers did not have the correct home. Officers had raided the same apartment before, but Diaz and her family moved into the home back in May. The person who used to occupy the apartment does have a criminal record.
“They came into my house like that when they did not have their facts right,” Alequin said.
According to the news station, the district attorney’s office released a statement saying, “The search warrant was executed based on the best intelligence at the time. [The target] had been in the dwelling in the days before the execution of the search warrant.”
The family’s attorney, Hector Pineiro, brushed off the explanation, saying his clients’ rights were violated. “It’s clear to me that the [district attorney’s] office is not going to look into what happened because he’s already giving the blessing they acted on the best intelligence, which is a complete joke,” Pineiro said.
Diaz was reportedly naked at the time of the raid, and Alequin said that about 10 minutes passed before the young mom was allowed to cover herself. Despite her nudity, a female officer reportedly frisked Diaz, the Boston Globe reported.
“You can imagine 10 officers looking and pointing guns at a naked 23-year-old mother protecting her two kids. The horrific language and pointing of weapons at children cannot be justified under any circumstances,” Pineiro told CBS Boston.
Diaz said she hopes there will at least be an investigation into the matter. “I just want there to be a full-on investigation, and give us an explanation as to why they did this to my family and why they terrorized us the way they did,” the upset mother said.
According to the Boston Globe, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker called the raid “troubling,” adding that state police will investigate.
“You hope something like this never happens,” Baker told the Globe Sunday. “I am going to let the investigation play out before I say anything.”
Alequin, however, told the Globe that part of the issue is that no one is saying anything at all.
“Nobody said sorry to us,” he said. “That’s what hurts the most. They said they were doing their jobs.”
“We’ve all been traumatized,” Alequin added. “My kids jump every time there’s a knock at the door. My fiancee is hysterical. At night I can’t sleep next to her … she jumps out of her sleep.”
Read more at CBS Boston and the Boston Globe.