Reply #8: Civil trial begins for 13 bystanders injured in Elian raid [View All]

From the Miami Herald, on the first
Posted on Mon, Jan. 24, 2005

Civil trial begins for 13 bystanders injured in Elian raid
Associated Press


MIAMI - A woman who lived near Elian Gonzalez's Miami family testified Monday that she clutched her chest and thought she was dying when a federal agent doused her with tear gas during the armed raid to reunite the boy with his Cuban father.

Maria Riera was the opening witness in the civil trial of 13 people seeking up to $250,000 in damages on claims that federal agents used unnecessary excessive force during the April 2000 raid, leaving them injured and emotionally distraught.

"I was stopped by a gentleman on my left approaching me with a shotgun," said Riera, who lived across the street from the home where the boy had lived since shortly after he was rescued from the water off Fort Lauderdale on Thanksgiving Day 1999.
She said a black-garbed agent wearing a mask ordered her to "stand back" or he would shoot, adding a word of profanity. She said she complied, but a second agent approached with a gas gun as she stood in her driveway and left her in a gray cloud of tear gas.
(snip)

Plaintiffs include Riera and her ex-husband Eduardo Rodriguez, a watchmaker who blames eye dryness and recent cataract surgery on the gas.
(snip)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/10721657.htm
(Free registration is required)

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They should NOT be confused with people who have actually been injured during legal protest demonstrations, this one in Oakland. Wooden bullets.


ETC.

The Cuban-"exile" extremists surrounding Lázaro Gonzalez house to prevent the U.S. Government's retrieval of Elián were attempting to block U.S. agents from carrying out a court order to pick him up. The uncle had been given every chance in the world, and was refusing publically to comply.

I'd like to see what would happen to an average citizen publically thumbing his nose at a federal court order.