Axeel Melendez, 24, is suing Chris Nanos and the Pima County sheriff’s department for $176 million after deputies shot him and left him paralyzed during a swatting response in Tucson. The lawsuit was filed after Melendez said he had already warned the department that he was being targeted for swatting.
That warning makes the case more than a claim for damages. It asks why deputies responded with gunfire after the department had already received a suspicious call to Melendez’s house, determined it was fake and, by one account, told him he should be alright and that he would be warned if more calls came in.
In the new filing, Melendez’s side says a person impersonating him called the sheriff’s department around 6 a.m. and claimed his father had shot his sister. Deputies then smashed his bedroom window with a shovel, climbed inside with guns drawn and fired seven shots through a door where Melendez was crouched behind a family firearm. He was hit in the leg and spine.
His lawyer said the dispatcher had previously told Melendez, “They can’t just call SWAT on you. That’s not how it works,” and assured him that “nothing’s going to happen.” The suit says Melendez had also been threatened online by a hacker who said he would call in a bogus bomb threat at the house, adding to the fear that the family was already living with before the shooting.
The friction in the case is simple and ugly: less than 48 hours after deputies had already determined one call was fake, another swatting call came in and they opened fire. The lawsuit says Melendez’s earlier warning should have changed how the department handled the second call, not only because he had flagged the threat, but because officers had already been inside the same problem and knew the first alarm was a hoax.
Chris Nanos is already facing another lawsuit over the investigation into the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, making this the second major legal challenge to the department in two weeks. In that separate case, Carlos Palazuelos and two family members plan to sue over what they say was a wrongful arrest and raid after Guthrie vanished in February, including claims that deputies drew guns, held Palazuelos for seven to eight hours in Rio Rico and kept him from clearing his name.
The department declined to comment on pending litigation, and the next move now belongs in court. What the filing does make clear is that Melendez says his life was changed in seconds, and the size of the claim shows he intends to make the department answer for every step that led deputies to fire those seven shots.
