‘Guns pointed right at my head’: Armed Myrtle Beach police officers raid wrong home
Armed with assault rifles and wearing all black, six Myrtle Beach police officers rammed through a front door, forced their way inside a home and pointed their guns at a teenager. His sister ran and hid in a closet. Their mother was pulled outside while screaming.
Police were searching for a burglary suspect when they raided Sarah Magallanes’ home.
But police had the wrong address.
“I think the emotional damage to my kids and to me, I didn’t even realize it until the other day, I kind of pushed it down I guess,” Sarah Magallanes told The Sun News.
“It just hit me, you know? I just want them to realize the damage they do to these families that do nothing wrong.”
The raid
Myrtle Beach police conducted the raid on the wrong townhouse on July 25, 2018. Although police officials apologized to Sarah Magallanes that night and the following day, they assured the family police would return with more information.
The Magallanes are sharing their story now because they say police failed to follow up on that promise.
Myrtle Beach police targeted the Magallanes’ 607 37th Ave. North Apt. D home as they investigated a burglary on 44th Avenue North from a day earlier. A search warrant, provided to The Sun News, detailed some items they wanted:
“Sought from the apartment described above in connection with a burglary second-degree investigation, the following are sought. Sought items include an acoustic guitar, an acoustic guitar case, a large suitcase … also sought is any trace evidence to include fingerprint on the above mentioned items to be processed by the Myrtle Beach Crime Scene Unit.”
Sarah Magallanes lived at 607 D with her husband and their two children. Alfredo was 15 at the time and Aurora was 11 years old.
The family lived at the townhome for seven years, much longer than they initially planned. The hope was to only briefly live there. Several buildings are run-down, there is trash in the road and few people walk the area alone.
It was a lazy day at home for the Magallanes. Alfredo watched YouTube videos in his bedroom and Sarah and Aurora watched “Vampire Diaries” on Netflix in another room.
A “Whack!” came from the front door at 7:14 p.m. and Sarah and Alfredo came out to investigate.
Initially, they thought a “crackhead” was trying to breaking in — it wouldn’t have been the first time — and they were trying to get to the baseball bat in the living room for protection. Alfredo, wearing only his pajamas, stepped in front of his pajama-clad mom as they made it halfway down the stairs.
“Whack!” Again the thud against the front door. This time, though, the door swung open and the bottom panel of the wood door was knocked out.
“As soon as I saw that door crack open, I saw the battering ram,” Alfredo said. “As soon the door opened, there were guns pointed right at my head or right at my face.”
A half-dozen police officers holding assault rifles and wearing all black with bulletproof vests poured inside the home.
“They wouldn’t say anything and they just pulled me out,” Sarah Magallanes recalled.
Aurora was behind her mom and ran to a bedroom closet in the commotion. Later, her mom would have to coax her out of her hiding spot.
“I thought someone was breaking into the house,” Aurora said, her voice rising as she started to cry. “I just didn’t want anything to happen to Mom or my brother because I was just scared.
“Then I saw Mom was just so angry and she started crying out of anger and she told them to stop and I didn’t know what to do.”
“I had my boxers on, I had no weapons, what could I do — I’m just a kid?” Alfredo said. “They still continued to point their guns at me. They were telling me to put my hands up. ‘Put ‘em up. Put ‘em up.’ So I did the right thing and put ‘em up and slowly walked down the stairs.
“I know they messed up. I know they messed up for sure. I was a little scared.”
Police handcuffed Sarah Magallanes outside and the children watched their mom being detained. Officers provided little information about the raid.
“They wouldn’t give me any answers and they wouldn’t let me call anybody,” Sarah Magallanes said.
The aftermath
The search warrant, granted by a judge hours before the raid, does not name the burglary suspects.
Police asked a cuffed Sarah Magallanes if she knew Sarah Meadows, she recalled. She said she didn’t until police showed her a picture and she identified a neighbor.
Sarah Meadows lived at 605 37th Ave. Apt. D, Sarah Magallanes said, with her boyfriend. That residence is about 15 feet away from the Magallanes’ front door. The boyfriend and others had come out of their apartment to see the commotion.
Police spoke to them, calmly, after Sarah Magallanes pointed them out while still in handcuffs by her car.
Some neighbors contacted Sarah Magallanes’ husband at work and he quickly returned home. The neighbors also tried to give Alfredo a shirt while he stood in the rain.
It took more than an hour after the raid for police to free Sarah Magallanes, she said.
“I remember shaking really badly — it was something that happened out of the blue. Kind of like a bomb,” Alfredo said.
“I was livid,” Sarah Magallanes said, her family having nothing more than a traffic ticket in criminal charges. “You hear stuff like this all the time, but you don’t expect it to come to your door.”
Officers continued to make excuses and said something similar happened at an investigator’s home after he accidentally listed his address on a search warrant.
“And I’m like, ‘that makes this OK?’” Sarah Magallanes asked.
The police explain
Some of the family’s conversations with police after the raid were recorded on cellphone videos and provided to The Sun News.
An investigator told the Magallanes about their leads and how he wants to make Myrtle Beach safer.
“Obviously you guys are not bad criminals,” the officer says. “I’m trying to talk to ya. If I didn’t care, I’d just leave and say ‘I didn’t do nothing wrong.’
“I understand I made a mistake. I just hope you can understand I am human and that I recognize my mistake and I apologize a million times to you.”
The family remained in the 307 Apt. D home that night with a broken door. Officers told the family about the process to fix the entryway and said they would check on them during the night to make sure they were safe.
Sarah Magallanes said she went to the Oak Street police department that night to file a formal complaint. She said she completed the paperwork in a room with drawings of her block, down to a neighborhood dog.
“This never should have happened,” Sarah Magallanes wrote in her complaint, the word “never” is underlined.
Myrtle Beach police arrested Sarah Meadows three days after the raid for second-degree burglary. Court records for that charge still list Meadow’s address at 607 37th Ave. North Apt. D.
Sarah Magallanes said Sarah Meadows never lived at their 607 address. A June 2018 arrest also lists the 607 D address. Earlier arrests list Meadows address as 605 37th Ave. North Apt. D.
The burglary arrest warrant lists many of the items mentioned in the search warrant. It states surveillance video showed a woman — identified as Meadows — carrying an acoustic guitar case that a victim said was taken from their home.
Meadows lived at 607 D and a landlord confirmed the location, according to the arrest warrant.
On the night of the raid, the investigator showed the Magallanes text messages with the landlord where he confirmed Meadow’s location through Google Maps. That exchange was filmed on a cellphone.
The landlord said he would meet police at the location, but they conducted the raid before he arrived.
Myrtle Beach Police Chief Amy Prock and Assistant Chief Marty Brown met the Magallanes at their home the day after the raid. Some of that exchange was filmed by the family and provided to The Sun News.
“We just wanted to come by and first I wanted to apologize,” Prock said.
The chief explained the department’s investigation process and asked if city workers could fix the door that day. Most of the 15-minute video is Sarah Magallanes venting, but Prock insists the department will follow up and “make this right.”
“I know there is nothing that I can say to the three of you,” Prock said. “I am, I’m truly sorry this happened. On behalf of our city and our department, I truly am sorry and I can tell you we will investigate it. And we will be back in touch to sit down with you and talk to you about it.
“I can assure you that will happen.”
The family said that didn’t happen for a year.
The impact
Sarah Magallanes said she called police several times in the past year and received little information. That was until last week when an internal affairs officer contacted the family.
That call happened after The Sun News approached Myrtle Beach police about this story. Department administrators declined to speak to The Sun News, but provided a statement late on Friday.
“Our officers were attempting to serve an arrest warrant on July 25, 2018. Several factors led us to believe the wanted person would be located in the residence where the search warrant was served. Ultimately, that was not the case,” the statement reads.
The city notes that the chief spoke to Magallanes the next day and the city fixed the door. The department also evaluated its training and procedures in the incident’s aftermath.
But it remains unclear if anything changed and why such force was necessary for the search.
Police claimed they were not aware the Magallanes family still had concerns. Cpl. Thomas Vest said they are not immediately aware of any other time the department searched for a suspect at the wrong home.
“The fact they never ever ever contacted me again after everything,” Sarah Magallanes said. “Was anyone held accountable for their actions, not following through?
“Honestly I feel if they just waited for my landlord’s son to just come over with the lease like they were supposed to, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Alfredo and Aurora have become more reserved and their personalities have changed since the raid, Sarah Magallanes said. Alfredo meets with a therapist and both kids said they don’t trust the police.
One day at school, an officer gave a demonstration and showed their gun and handcuffs, and Aurora detailed how she became uncomfortable with flashbacks to July 25.
“All I’d see when I see them is just that moment. Just flashes of how much anger I felt because it changed everything for me,” she said.
An officer at school once tried to joke with Alfredo but he wasn’t interested, he said. Though, Alfredo said he recently had a good conversation with an officer who visited the movie theater where the teen works.
The family moved to a new neighborhood after the raid. They tried to find a lawyer for a potential civil case to no avail. They said they don’t want another family to share their experience.
“I just want police to be held accountable for their actions for once,” Sarah Magallanes said, “because you hear about them getting away with so many things.”
This story was originally published July 25, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
