RAID TAPES SHOW RESCUE EFFORT

Osawatomie Man Was Fatally Shot In Home By Officer

Officers identified themselves as they raided an Osawatomie, Kan.,
house in February and tried to use plastic wrap to save a man who was
shot by an officer, tapes of the drug raid show.

On Tuesday, Miami County Attorney David Miller let reporters hear an
audiotape and see a videotape from the raid, part of the evidence he
used to determine that officers broke no laws in the Feb. 13 shooting
that left Willie Heard, 46, dead.

Investigators said a Paola officer fired his gun when Heard pointed an
unloaded rifle at officers who had run into his bedroom. Heard's
family said that the raid woke him, and that he grabbed the rifle
before he knew what was going on.

The tapes start with officers' driving to Heard's house at 721 Walnut
St. About 1:25 a.m., they turned off their lights as they approached
the house, where police said an informant hours earlier had bought a
substance thought to be cocaine.

``All right, I think we ought to roll,'' said an officer on the team,
which was made of police from Osawatomie and Paola, and Miami County
sheriff's deputies.

Officers detonated a flash-bang device and rushed through the door,
shouting, ``Police search warrant, police search warrant! Get on the
ground, get on the ground! Police search warrant! ''

While the screen door was swinging shut 11 seconds into the raid,
there was a pop on the audiotape, which was recording from the pocket
of one of the first officers in the house.

``Shots fired, shots fired! '' a man shouted. ``Get out of here and
I'll help him! '' An officer shouted for a woman to lie face down on
the ground while another officer asked her where to find Saran Wrap.
She asked someone to call an

ambulance and then said there was Saran Wrap on an upper
shelf.

``Oh, my God, what are they doing? '' the woman asked.

An officer told her that an ambulance was already there, but it was
seen on the tape arriving about four minutes after the shooting.

The tape showed Heard lying on his left side with blood around him.
``You're all right,'' an officer told him. ``Lie on your back so I can
stop the bleeding. ''

Another officer picked up the rifle, which was fitted with a scope,
from the bedroom floor.

The officer who was videotaping the raid moved outside. The tape ended
with paramedics rolling Heard past yellow police tape and loading him
on an ambulance while they administered cardiopulmonary
resuscitation.

The search turned up a small amount of what police think is marijuana,
but no cocaine. A few hours after the shooting, police arrested
Heard's 23-year-old niece at her home next door, and then released
her, pending results of lab tests on a substance that officers said
she sold as cocaine to an informant on her uncle's porch. A field test
indicated that it was cocaine, Miller said.

Lab tests had not come back by Tuesday, and the woman had not been
charged, Miller said.

To reach Richard Espinoza, Johnson County police reporter for The
Star, call (816) 234-7714 or send e-mail to respinoza@kcstar.com