Axeel Melendez has filed a $176 million Pima County Sheriff lawsuit against Chris Nanos and the Pima County sheriff’s department after deputies shot him and left him paralyzed during a swatting response. His attorney says Melendez had already warned the department he was being targeted for swatting.
The lawsuit centers on a shooting that left Melendez hit in the leg and spine after deputies fired seven shots through a door during a raid at his home. Dev Sethi said the dispatcher had reassured Melendez before the raid, telling him, “They can’t just call SWAT on you. That’s not how it works.” And assured him that … “nothing’s going to happen,”
Dev Sethi on Melendez
Sethi also said, “Axeel is a shooting victim whose life will never be the same … He’s not just looking at years of medical treatment and a mountain of hospital bills; his life has been shattered,”
Before the shooting, someone impersonating Melendez called the sheriff’s department at around 6 a.m. and said his father had shot his sister. Deputies later smashed Melendez’s bedroom window with a shovel, climbed inside with guns drawn, and Melendez woke his mother, told her to hide, and cowered behind a door with the family’s legally registered firearm.
Melendez and the warning
Melendez’s lawyer said he had warned the sheriff’s department that he was being targeted for swatting, and Melendez also called 911 before the raid after an online hacker threatened to call in a bogus bomb threat at his house. The sheriff’s department received a suspicious call to Melendez’s house, determined that it was fake, and officers told him he “should be alright” and said they would warn him if they received any more calls to the address.
Less than 48 hours later, another swatting call came in and deputies opened fire and paralyzed Melendez. That sequence gives the case its force: a warning, a false call identified as fake, then a second call that ended with a permanent injury and a damages demand large enough to put the department’s response under a legal microscope.
Pima County Sheriff lawsuit
The Melendez case lands while Chris Nanos is already facing another multi-million-dollar lawsuit tied to the investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie. The source says the Melendez filing is the second major lawsuit against the department in two weeks, and the department declined to comment on pending litigation.
For Melendez, the next step is the legal fight over why deputies used lethal force after the earlier warning and false call. The suit puts the response, the warning process, and the deputies’ decision to fire seven shots into one case file.
