BEREFT FAMILY DISPUTES POLICE SHOOTING REPORT

It was an hour before midnight when an El Monte police SWAT team, serving a
search warrant as part of a broad-ranging narcotics investigation,
undertook what it called the "high-risk entry" of a Compton home--shooting
the locks off the front and back doors.

Their warrant, which named no one in the Paz home, says police expected to
find marijuana and cash belonging to a suspected member of a drug ring who
had allegedly used the house as a maildrop. They found no drugs, but in the
course of the search they shot a retired grandfather twice in the
back--killing him.

The widow was hustled out of the house in nothing but panties, a towel and
plastic handcuffs. She and six others were later taken away and intensively
interrogated, but no one was charged. Ten thousand dollars in cash was
seized as evidence,along with a .22-caliber rifle and three pistols,
according to investigators for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
The family said that the money was patriarch Mario Paz's life savings and
that he kept firearms for protection in the high-crime neighborhood.

El Monte police, who obtained the search warrant and conducted the Aug. 9
raid, said they were using standard procedure for dangerous places where
they fear officers will be fired on. A sheriff's investigator said the El
Monte officer shot Paz because he thought he was reaching for a
weapon--something Paz's widow, Maria Luisa, adamantly denies.

Now the six children of Mario Paz--a grandfather of 14 who would have
turned 65 this week--are demanding to know why the police burst into the
home while the family was sleeping. And what were El Monte police doing in
Compton?

The arrest warrant said the Paz home was considered high-risk because
high-powered rifles were found in a search of another home linked to the
suspect. And El Monte police say their aggressive anti-drug strategy
commonly prompts them to serve search warrants as far afield as Riverside,
San Diego and San Bernardino.

"We go all over. Anything related to our town we go out and get," said El
Monte Police Sgt. Steve Krigbaum, the head of the force's Narcotics
Policing Division.

"If we can show it directly impacts narco activity here, we'll go after
it," he said.

Brian Dunn, the lawyer representing the Pazes, said the officers should
have known the family did not pose a threat.

"They fired shotguns through doors and windows as people were sleeping,"
Dunn said. "The tactics in this case were beyond merely reckless. I don't
think there's anything [the family] could have done to prevent [Mario Paz]
from getting killed. This was no different than a home invasion, in terms
of what happened to the family."

'It Was Like War,' Neighbor Says

Family members said they believed that a robbery was in progress when they
heard the shooting.

Sheriff's investigators say El Monte police shot the locks off the front
and back doors to the house, shot a "diversionary device" into a back
bedroom window that illuminated it, and threw a so-called flash-bang
grenade on the ground behind the house. Neighbors said they awoke with a
jolt when they heard the shooting.

"It was like war," said Luz Escamilla, who lives next door.

El Monte Police Lt. Craig Sperry, commander of the Special Emergency
Response Team that carried out the operation, said up to 20 El Monte
officers were involved in the raid. He said he could not comment on
specific tactics used that night because of the possibility of litigation.
He said Compton police, who have refused all comment, were also at the scene.

However, Sperry said, "We always announce, 'El Monte police. Open the door.' "

El Monte Assistant Police Chief Bill Ankeny said an explosive entry is a
standard SWAT procedure and can involve opening a door with a battering ram
or a round of gunfire.

"We throw flash-bang grenades. We bust open the doors. You've seen it on
TV," Ankeny said. "We do bang on the door and make an announcement--'It's
the police'--but it kind of runs together. If you're sitting on the couch,
it would be difficult to get to the door before they knock it down."

Sleeping on their couch, the Paz family said, was David Martinez, 63, a
convalescing friend. He was unhurt.

Until the raid occurred, the family said, they had been resting after a
routine Monday.

Maria Luisa Paz, 51, said her husband, a Mexican immigrant, had been driven
to Tijuana for doctor's appointments that morning. She showed a reporter
his purchases of medicine prescribed for his heart condition, prostate
ailment, and back problems from a 1985 on-the-job injury.

She said he also emptied his Tijuana bank account of more than $10,000 in
savings, fearing that the money could be lost to the much-publicized
computer complications that some people are afraid will occur Jan. 1. She
showed a reporter the bank receipt for the withdrawal.

Mario took his medicine at 8 p.m. and went to bed, she said.

El Monte police showed up about 11 p.m., according to Sheriff's Lt. Marilyn
Baker, who is conducting the standard investigation into the
officer-involved shooting. Myrna Serrano, 44, a friend of the family who
lives in a converted garage at the front of the house, said she awoke to
gunfire.

"I didn't even hear them say they were police," said Serrano, an employee
at an art frame factory. "I thought they were thieves coming to rob us. I
never dreamed they would be police busting into the house in camouflage and
hoods."

Maria Argueta, who works as a nanny in Manhattan Beach, awoke in a back
bedroom to the flash-bang grenade and screamed, "Don't kill me," the family
said.

By that time, Maria Luisa Paz said, she may have heard officers yelling
"search warrant," but "I had no idea who they were. They didn't show badges
or anything at all. I yelled to my husband, 'Get on the ground! We're being
robbed.' "

She said she got on the floor in her panties while her husband got his
$10,000 from under the bed and put the money and his hands on the bed.

At this point, Sheriff's Lt. Baker said, two El Monte officers entered
Mario and Maria Luisa's bedroom while six others searched the rest of the
house.

Conflicting Accounts of Patriarch's Actions

The officers said they ordered the couple--in Spanish and English--to show
their hands, according to Baker. The lieutenant said Mario Paz "appeared to
be reaching for something, and believing him to be arming himself, the
officer fired two rounds . . . striking Mr. Paz in the back."

His widow described the scene differently:

"They yelled and yelled. I said, 'My husband is sick! He's an old man!' I
grabbed [the officer's] leg," she recalled. "[The officer] just pointed the
gun at my husband and shot."

She said the officer, wearing a mask, "just looked at me." Then another
officer came in and ordered her in Spanish to "get up and put something
on," she said.

As police hustled her outside, someone handed her a towel that she draped
across her chest.

Sheriff's investigators said two of the pistols were in a drawer on the
floor near Mario and a third was in a bureau drawer with the rifle.

Maria Luisa was allowed to dress before she was put into a mini-van, where
she found that her great-nephew, Juan Carlos Mechaca, had been handcuffed
when he got home from practicing with his band. His mother, Leonela Ramos,
Mario Paz's niece, had been detained when she got home from her night shift
at a credit card factory. Maria Luisa's son Jorge, 20, a computer drafter
for a Norwalk firm who had been in another bedroom when the raid occurred,
was also handcuffed. Altogether, seven people were taken to the Compton
Police Department for questioning by El Monte police and Los Angeles County
sheriff's investigators.

Though they stayed until dawn, the Paz family said they were never read
their rights. Sheriff's Lt. Baker said that was because the family was not
under arrest--they were detained as witnesses to the shooting.

"They were not [detained as] suspects," Baker said. "They were taken in as
witnesses to the officer-involved shooting. Witnesses do not get read their
Miranda rights. People can be detained in handcuffs for safekeeping."

But Jorge Paz said one sheriff's investigator "asked if my dad sold drugs
or ever had a problem with anybody. I said, 'No, no.' My dad didn't even
want us to smoke or drink. He wanted us all to go to school. He was a good
man."

The drug suspect named in the warrant is Marcos Beltran Lizarraga. The Paz
family said that he lived next door in the early 1980s, that Mario sold him
a car six years or so ago and that he occasionally used the Pazes' mailing
address. The family said that they sometimes would mark the mail "return to
sender" but that on other occasions their father gave it to Beltran's nephew.

Mario Paz was pronounced dead at 11:29 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew
Medical Center, according to the county coroner's office.

At the time he died, he was planning to sell his house and move to
Colorado, according to Mario Paz Jr., 31, a computer operations supervisor
for the Denver office of a California HMO.

"This was a real shock," he said.

El Monte Assistant Chief Ankeny said his department has begun an internal
investigation. He said two officers were placed on routine administrative
leave after the shooting but have since returned to work.

"Obviously, the officer who killed the person actually felt he was being
threatened," he said.

John Bellizzi, director of the International Narcotics Enforcement Assn. in
Albany, N.Y., said surprise is an essential element in getting evidence for
SWAT team raids. Because of the danger of fighting drug dealers, officers
"have to take serious precautions to safeguard their lives, and sometimes
unforeseen things happen. It's unavoidable sometimes. These drug dealers
are better equipped sometimes than the police are."

But David Lynn, a private investigator assigned to the case, said: "Even if
this guy was the 'Godfather,' that would not justify the level of violence
used in this search."