The SWAT team showed up at a Florida mayor’s door. Then he started shooting, police say.
By Reis Thebault and
Eli Rosenberg February 21 at 11:29 PM
The mayor of a small Gulf Coast town in Florida was arrested on Thursday after shooting at a SWAT team that had come to arrest him on charges of illegally practicing medicine, officials say.
Dale Glen Massad, mayor of Port Richey, a town of around 2,600 north of Tampa, fired two shots at officers who raided his home in the early hours of the morning, Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco told reporters. No officers were injured.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement was investigating Massad, a former doctor who gave up his license in 1992, after being tipped off by the Port Richey Police Department that Massad was still practicing medicine, officials said.
The law enforcement team showed up at Massad’s house around 4:40 a.m. They identified themselves and pounded on his door, battering it with a ram and shooting it with a shotgun before realizing the door opened outward, according to a complaint affidavit in the case.
They lit a distraction device inside the front door that emitted a bang and a bright light, after which they heard two shots from inside the house, the complaint said. SWAT team members moved back from the house, observing Massad with a gun in his left hand on the home’s second floor, using a cellphone.
Nocco said the SWAT team loudly announced its presence before entering the home and asked Massad to drop his weapon. At some point during the incident, Massad made statements that he did not want to go back to jail, Nocco said.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/22/swat-team-showed-up-florida-mayors-door-then-he-started-shooting-police-say/?utm_term=.46b5f3ba8073
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