Sometimes, January 28, 2019 seems like just a day ago.
“And in sometimes, it feels like ages,” Jo Ann Nicholas, a mother who is still grieving over the loss of her daughter, Rogena, said. “But, every day I miss her.”
The 89-year-old isn’t alone in her painful memories of that fateful day five years ago. Hundreds of miles away, Ryan Tuttle, the son of Dennis, also remembers.
“I was watching the news, and, uh, I noticed that there was something going on, on Harding Street. I immediately tuned into that and started calling my dad,” Tuttle said.
But Dennis Tuttle never picked up the phone. On that fateful January afternoon, a Houston Police narcotics squad, led by lead case agent Gerald Goines, executed a no-knock warrant at the home where Dennis and Rhogena lived.
Gunfire ensued. And when the bullets stopped flying, Rhogena, Dennis, and their dog were dead. Several officers, including Goines, were hurt, too.
The warrant signed off by a judge that allowed the no-knock raid would later be found to contain bogus information – that the couple were hardcore heroin dealers.