Federal marshals shot an Alabama woman inside her home while looking for a drug suspect who was already in jail.
A drug task force unit raided a home around 5:30 a.m. Thursday in Mobile County seeking a man who no longer lived there -- and who had been arrested on drug charges about 15 hours earlier, reported AL.com.
The man's nephew was outside emptying the trash with a friend before work, and his fiancée Ann Rylee was sleeping inside on a recliner when sheriff's deputies and marshals arrived in body armor.
The 19-year-old woman grabbed a shotgun kept in the living room for protection, and federal marshals opened fire within seconds.
"The entry team was giving her orders, 'Drop the gun, put the gun down, drop the gun,' several times over a period of a few seconds," said Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran. "She pointed the gun at one of them and two or three agents fired upon her."
Christopher McLeod disputed their account, saying the drug task force did not identify themselves as law enforcement, never ordered his fiancée to drop the shotgun and instead yelled "gun" several times before opening fire.
“They had us face down in the dirt outside the whole time this was going on,” McLeod said.
Rylee has undergone surgery for her wounds and is expected to recover.
McLeod's uncle, Nicholas McLeod, had been arrested a day earlier on charges including possession of drug paraphernalia and evidence tampering.
The sheriff believes investigators neglected to run a final check before sending out the task force to make an arrest, or the computer system might have failed to show the warrant was no longer active.
"We do know that there is a miscommunication in this situation," Cochran said. "We don't know the exact cause. We have narrowed it down to one of two things."
The shooting remains under investigation, but Cochran blamed the woman who was shot.
"If she would not have pointed a gun at the agents they would have determined all that on the scene, and would have bid her a good day and thank you very much," he said.
The raid was carried out by the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office, Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
Cochran said the shots were fired by federal agents, not deputies.
