Police fatally shoot man after serving arrest warrant at wrong home

Mississippi police reportedly shot and killed Ismael Lopez after serving an arrest warrant at the wrong house on Sunday.

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Mississippi police reportedly shot and killed a man after serving an arrest warrant at the wrong house on Sunday.

The warrant was for Samuel Pearman, who was wanted for assault, but they ended up across the street at the home of Ismael Lopez instead. Police said that they shot and killed Lopez after firing a shot at his pit bull when the dog attacked them and then saw that Lopez had a gun in his hand.

“One of the officers did fire a shot at the pit bull dog,” DeSoto County Prosecutor John Champion said. “While this was going on, they also noticed at the time that a gun was pointed outside the residence. At this point, the officers began hollering ‘put the gun down, put the gun down,’ at which point that did not occur and there were more than one shot was fired toward the door, and there was a male subject inside the residence that was killed.”

However, Lopez’s wife disputed both of these claims, according to Jordan Castillo, a family friend.

“She said when he got up, she heard the footsteps all the way up to the door, she heard the doorknob turn, and then after the doorknob turned it was just gunshots from there,” Castillo said.

“Somebody didn’t take the time to analyze the address,” Murray Wells, an attorney who was hired by Lopez’s family, told UPI. “This is incredibly tragic and embarrassing to this police department that they can’t read house numbers.”

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