Deputies Accused of ‘Cold Blood’ Killing in Raid

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies stormed a Malibu ranch house and killed the owner “in cold blood,” an attorney for the man’s family charged Thursday in an opening statement in the trial of a $20-million civil rights suit.

A lawyer for Los Angeles County and the Sheriff’s Department told a federal court jury in his opening remarks, however, that the sheriff’s SWAT team went to the ranch with a valid warrant to search for drugs and shot Glenn Gorio only after Gorio first fired a shot from an automatic pistol.

Gorio, 26, died in a spray of submachine-gun bullets fired by a deputy through the door of Gorio’s bedroom in a large, three-level home on Mulholland Highway near Trancas Lakes during the predawn raid Oct. 26, 1984.

“Without probable cause for obtaining the search warrant and in cold blood, the defendant deputy sheriffs murdered Glenn Gorio,” said Stephen Yagman, the attorney for Gorio’s mother, Nina Gorio, 50, Agoura; father, Julio Gorio, 64, Reseda, and two sisters.

Paul De Pasquale, the county’s lawyer, told jurors and U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts that sheriff’s narcotics detectives did have “probable cause” to suspect there were narcotics at the house. He said SWAT team deputies also had reason to believe that serving the search warrant would be dangerous.

Fired at Deputy

Gorio appeared at his upstairs bedroom door with an automatic pistol and aimed it at a deputy at the other end of the hall, De Pasquale said. “He fired the gun, then stepped behind the door of the bedroom” and aimed again.

“The deputy returned fire and Mr. Gorio was killed,” De Pasquale said.

The suit claims the search warrant was issued solely on information from an anonymous telephone call to authorities. The caller claimed Gorio was a major cocaine dealer and the information was passed on to narcotics deputies, the suit said.

Sheriff Sherman Block and nearly 20 deputies are accused in the suit of conspiring to violate Gorio’s rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.

(A search of the house uncovered 1.2 ounces of marijuana, 25 grams of methamphetamine, a water pipe, scales and other drug use and sales paraphernalia.