BROWNSVILLE, Fla. – Daniel Pacheco said Miami-Dade police officers damaged his home surveillance cameras and his main door before they stormed inside on Thursday morning in Brownsville. There was gunfire near his grandson and his teenage son was arrested.
Detective Alvaro Zabaleta, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade Police Department, said the officers had a search warrant. Pacheco’s wife, Karla Vasquez, said she was sleeping when the officer’s noise woke her up. She said she ran out of her room and what she witnessed was terrifying.
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“I literally saw my son miss the shots,” she said.
Their daughter Jairany Pacheco thought the officers had wounded her 17-year-old brother Joshua Pacheco, who managed to get away from officers and into a room unscathed. Daniel Pacheco said there were bullet holes along his staircase and shattered windows.
“My son was scared when he saw that they fired at him, so he tried to leave to the other side,” Vasquez said. “Who wouldn’t?”
Zabaleta said Joshua, a convicted felon, confronted members of the department’s special response team, ran away from them, barricaded himself in a second-floor room, and climbed out a window to hide on the roof of the house just before 6 a.m.
“They were met with a confrontational teen who they were forced to shoot at,” Zabaleta said. “If we know that there are firearms, or any kind of activity involving firearms near a school, near students that is when we as community members have to step forward.”
Vasquez said her son was not holding a gun and her 4-month-old grandson was in the home. Zabaleta said officers recovered a gun and no one was injured.
“It is a lie that he received the officers with a gun, that he confronted them,” the distraught mother said. “How could you? You would have been dead right now.”
Joshua was on probation for a firearms charge. He is facing charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer. He is set to face a judge on Friday.