Imagine if this couple had legally possessed a weapon and legally had it in hand against this home invasion. They’d be dead now.
ABQJournal Online » Couple: SWAT Storming Traumatic
By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writeron Wed, Apr 18, 2012
Bertha and Carlos Gamboa were watching TV in their home last week when SWAT officers with the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office broke through a door and ordered the couple at gunpoint to lie on the floor.
The deputies were executing a search warrant April 10 at an apartment two doors away from the Gamboas’ home in connection with the deaths of two people whose charred remains had been found earlier that day on the West Mesa.
But the Gamboas had no connection with those deaths, the couple said. A week later, the Gamoas remain traumatized that armed men stormed their home and held them at gunpoint for up to 10 minutes. …
Deputies used a battering ram to break through a wooden outer door, she said. When Bertha Gamboa opened her solid wood door, she saw the muzzle of a shotgun thrust toward her.
About seven deputies armed with shotguns entered the apartment and ordered the couple to lie on the floor, she said.
“Carlos was frozen, standing in the living room,” his wife recalled. Carlos Gamboa, who doesn’t speak English fluently, did not understand the deputy’s order. Bertha Gamboa said she told her husband in Spanish to lie down.
For the next five to 10 minutes, armed men stomped around the apartment until one of the deputies explained that they had the wrong apartment, she said.