FBI agent William Cosenza demonstrated for a federal jury Wednesday how his left thigh was pierced by a large-caliber bullet as he stood to the right of the front door on Demetrius Colbert's front porch in Marianna early Oct. 11, 2011, just after he and another agent had swung a battering ram that knocked in the door.
Seconds before swinging at the door, Cosenza had banged on the door three times and yelled, "FBI! Warrant! Open the door!" and tried the doorknob with his hand in case it wasn't locked. He said he held his left leg out to stop the door from closing after it was hit. Meanwhile, a state trooper who was parked in the driveway flipped on the blue lights of his marked unit as another agent in a sport utility vehicle helped light up the 4 a.m. darkness with his blue lights.
Suddenly, Cosenza said, he felt the pain of what turned out to be a bullet fired from a .40-caliber Glock handgun from inside the house. The bullet entered his inner left thigh and exited the other side, leaving bullet fragments that had to be surgically removed.
Jurors in the FBI's 2010-11 drug investigation in Lee and Phillips counties -- dubbed Operation Delta Blues -- saw photographs of the entry and exit wounds in Cosenza's leg, above the knee.
Another member of the FBI's special weapons and tactics team, Rich Bollinger of Norfolk, Va., testified that he was on a sidewalk leading to the front steps, lined up behind the agents who broke in the door and a third agent who carried a shield, and said they were to be the lead entry team into the house. Bollinger said his job was to enter the house behind the shield-carrier and set off a flash-bang grenade, a 3-inch-long cylindrical bomb that emits a blinding flash and a deafening noise to disorient the residents and give the agents a brief advantage.
Bollinger said that as he pulled the flash-bang grenade out of his vest, "I heard shots fired and the door being breached."
He said he grabbed the shield-carrying agent, whose view was obscured by the shield, and they crept backward, while he kept his eyes on a double window to the left of the front door. In the window, he said, he saw an arm holding a black gun, sweeping sheer curtains open.
Bollinger said he fired two shots from his machine gun into the upper part of the window -- unaware at the time that two children under the age of 12 were asleep in that bedroom.
Bollinger testified that he then took cover behind the trooper's car, issuing oral commands for the residents to come out. He said that about a minute later he saw Colbert's common-law wife, Catina Davis, step into view briefly before retreating back into the hallway. He said she returned to the doorway about 20 seconds later with her hands up and followed his commands to walk down the steps, where she was apprehended.
He said it took "another minute or two" for Colbert to emerge and also be taken into custody.
In preparation for the raid, agents said they had been told that Davis and the two children -- a boy and girl -- might be at the house, but that if the Mercedes that Davis usually drove wasn't at the house, chances were good that neither she nor the children were there. No Mercedes was there, they noted. They said they were surprised she and the children were at the home.
Bollinger testified that after the adults emerged, he deployed a foot-tall robot with an infrared camera to scan the interior of the house, but it didn't detect any other people. He said a three-man team entered, and the girl "made herself visible," then was escorted down the steps by officers as she held onto a little boy. The children's grandparents later picked them up.
Defense attorney Mark Hampton suggested that the agents' entry tactics put the children in harm's way and confused Colbert, who fired without realizing that the intruders were law enforcement officers.
Inside the split-level, brick-and-siding home with a well-kept yard, agents found a black .40-caliber Glock handgun on top of a cabinet in the master bathroom. Agent Traci Riley of Louisville, Ky., an experienced firearms examiner who led a team of crime-scene investigators, testified that the weapon smelled of gunpowder, indicating it had recently been fired.
Jurors saw photographs of cash that agents reported finding in plastic grocery bags inside a dryer, in a workout bag sitting next to the water heater, in a purse on the dresser and in the trunk of a red Oldsmobile Cutlass in the driveway. Prosecutors said agents found $423,000 in cash altogether.
Prosecutors said a small amount of cocaine was found in various places inside the house, but Colbert had flushed much of the drug before he was arrested.
Riley said agents also found a woman's diamond ring, a man's diamond ring, a diamond-encrusted bracelet, a diamond-studded cross pendant, a diamond-encrusted watch and diamond earrings inside the house. A jeweler described the items in detail along with their estimated retail value and a lower amount that the items would likely fetch at a government auction.
The diamond bracelet, which weighed almost 2 ounces, would be worth $10,000 at a government auction, but, "I figure somebody paid $30,000 for it," he said. He said one of the rings would retail for over $10,000, while the large watch, which was encrusted with more than 480 diamonds, would retail for about $40,000.
Prosecutors expect to rest their case sometime today.
Metro on 06/05/2014