Cops Kill DREAMer's Father After Hitting the Wrong House
Nearly a year after police went to arrest a domestic abuser but shot a pillar of the community, no one has been held responsible.
ANTHONY L FISHER
04.23.18 4:58 AM ET
Ismael Lopez was killed by police who came to his home in the middle of the night looking for an alleged domestic abuser who actually lived across the street. Nearly a year later, the authorities continue to shield the identities of the cops who killed him and won’t allow for a public accounting of the many mishaps that led to Lopez’s needless death.
Lopez was a Mexican-born immigrant who worked without documentation as an auto mechanic for the City of Bartlett, Tennessee. Across the state line in Southaven, Mississippi on July 23, 2017 he was asleep in his home when, according to his wife, Claudia, their barking pit bull woke the couple from their slumber. Ismael got out of bed to investigate. Moments later he was dead after a bullet ripped through the back of his skull.
The Southaven Police Department says Lopez aimed at rifle at them through a crack in the door and refused repeated orders to drop the weapon. Lopez’s wife says she never heard anyone call for a gun to be dropped, just the sounds of gunfire.
What is certain is that Lopez had no criminal record and was not the subject of any warrants. By all accounts he was a pillar of his community, yet he died in his own home at the hands of public servants tasked with protecting people like him.
Lopez’s 22-year-old son, Rodolfo—like his parents, an undocumented immigrant but protected (at least for now) by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy (DACA)—told The Daily Beast in a phone interview that his father was a hard-working, generous person. known to help elderly neighbors with yard work or automotive maintenance. “Nothing’s going to bring my dad back,” Rodolfo mournfully concedes through a distinct Southern twang, “but I want the truth to come out, and justice.”
The truth has been hard to come by, with the city denying public records requests and an investigation by DeSoto County and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations dragging on for over nine months with no estimated timeframe for resolution.
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