$10-Million Suit Takes Aim at Deputies in Fatal Raid

On the last night of his life, Glenn Gorio fell asleep in front of the television set. He had come back with his fiancee from a party at his mother’s home, climbed into bed and nodded off. The TV was still flickering in the master bedroom when 11 Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies burst through the front door.

Outfitted in camouflage vests, goggles, flashlights and submachine guns, a four-man advance team threw a concussion grenade up the stairs toward the master bedroom. The explosion, said Sheri Lloyd, Gorio’s fiancee, who had dropped off to sleep beside him, jarred the couple awake.

Gorio grabbed a gun from beside the bed and they both crept toward the bedroom door.

“He looked at me and said, ‘I think we’re being robbed again,’ ” Lloyd recalled. “I heard, ‘Right. Left. Over there. . . .’ I remember seeing a bunch of blacked-out faces. Looked like a bunch of black men.”

“Who is it? Who is it?” Gorio shouted.

“Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff’s Department,” Deputy David Furmanski replied.

Then there was a spray of bullets. One of them, investigators said later, came from Gorio’s gun and struck a wall in the hall outside the bedroom. Six others struck the 26-year-old automobile restorer, killing him instantly.

Gorio’s parents claim their son never knew what hit him that night in 1984 when members of the Sheriff’s Department’s special enforcement bureau came to serve a search warrant for suspected drug-dealing activities at the remote Malibu home.

Sheriff’s officials say they had shouted warnings about the raid from outside the house, had seen evidence of movement inside and then had announced their presence repeatedly on the way up the stairs. Gorio was shot, they say, because he fired first.

The question of what happened in the early hours of that October day is the center of a civil rights trial entering its sixth week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, a trial in which Gorio’s parents are trying to prove that their son was murdered.

Seeking Damages

“The basic purpose for this trial is to make the public aware that these things can and do happen right here, in their own homes,” said Nina Gorio, 51, who is seeking $10 million in damages from the Sheriff’s Department.

Yet sheriff’s officials, pointing out the 41 guns and 25 grams of methamphetamines found in the Gorio home, say they were justified in searching the house in the pre-dawn hours and say there is ample evidence that Gorio, who they claim had a previous arrest on narcotics and concealed weapons charges, knew exactly with whom he was dealing.

“We’re confident . . . that the jury will consider the evidence and . . . exonerate the members of the special enforcement bureau, who are among the best-trained police officers in the country,” said Anthony P. Serritella, the lawyer representing the Sheriff’s Department. “It’s a case where the good guys--the police--are accused by the bad guys of wrongdoing.”

The Gorios’ lawyers contend that it was the decision to serve a search warrant on the house at 4 a.m. with a tactical weapons team that set up the tragedy.

“Why didn’t they wait to search the house until it was empty?” asked attorney Stephen Yagman, who is representing the family with his partner, Marion R. Yagman. “The plan itself invited the violence that followed.”

Sheriff’s officials say they had information that Gorio was handling large quantities of cocaine, that he had an array of guns in the house and was believed to have an armed bodyguard--all factors that weighed in favor of raiding the house late at night, when occupants would have no opportunity to destroy evidence or launch an attack.

Gorio’s family claims that the allegations about their son’s drug-dealing activities--based primarily on reports from two unnamed informants--are unfounded.

The methamphetamines seized at the house were caffeine pills, which are not illegal, Stephen Yagman said. Moreover, Yagman claims that Gorio was never arrested for anything more serious than reckless driving.

“He was a son to be proud of,” Nina Gorio said. “He was a very happy-go-lucky, kind, gentle, very compassionate person loved by everyone who knew him.”

Julio Gorio testified that he had collected guns all his life and his son took up the hobby in his early 20s, trading with his father.

But U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts has already ruled that neither the decision to serve the search warrant in the middle of the night nor Glenn Gorio’s character are on trial.

“The only issue is whether any warning was given by anyone,” Letts said, noting that there is “strong” evidence that deputies did give such a warning.

But if Gorio genuinely believed he was firing at an intruder because no adequate warnings were given, Letts said, “that would then not put anybody in a position to lawfully fire back.”

The accounts of Gorio’s fiancee, Lloyd, and that of deputies who entered the house that night are nearly identical in their basic sequence of events.

But it is clear that those events appeared remarkably different to those who witnessed them on opposite sides of Gorio’s bedroom door.

According to Lloyd’s testimony, she and Gorio had returned to the house earlier in the day and found the front door standing open and a gun from Gorio’s collection missing. Gorio concluded that the house had been burglarized.

Later that night, the couple went over to Nina Gorio’s home for a small dinner party to celebrate their engagement. The mood was festive.

Concussion Grenade

After they fell asleep that night, it was the sound of the concussion grenade that awakened them, said Lloyd, who testified that she never heard any knock at the door or warning shouts by sheriff’s deputies until she and Gorio crept up to the bedroom door and heard the voices in the hallway outside.

“I heard, ‘He’s got a gun,’ she said.

Lloyd said Gorio whispered, “I think we’re being robbed again,” and then said, “Run, hon.”

“He pushed me down, and I heard a bunch of gunshots. . . . I started to run,” she said.

Lloyd said she hid behind a Jacuzzi outside the bedroom, then ran back to where Gorio was lying on the floor.

“I just went to grab him, to roll him over, to help him. I never got--I almost touched him, and someone threw a smoke bomb or something, and I couldn’t breathe. . . . I thought, ‘I’m not going down the hall. They’ll try to kill me too.’ ”

Deputies who were part of the two teams that entered the house that night testified that they stood at the front door for about 30 seconds, announcing that they had a search warrant, before they used a battering ram to break down the door.

The testimony of a neighbor corroborated the deputies’ claims that they had shouted warnings outside the house before they entered.

Even before that, one deputy said he had seen a sign of movement at one of the windows. Another deputy said he saw a man leaving the rear of the house.

About seven to 11 seconds after they entered the house, the concussion grenade was thrown upstairs, as the second-floor entry team mounted the stairs shouting “Sheriff’s Department,” said Deputy Furmanski, who led the team.

At that point, Furmanski testified, he heard an alarm go off in the room where he knew Gorio stored his guns. A safe containing several guns was standing open in the room.

“I heard a male voice say, ‘Who are you? Who are you?’ twice,” he said.

The voice, he said, was “coming from the direction of the bedroom.”

“I couldn’t see who was saying it,” the deputy said.

Moved Down Hall

Furmanski said he moved rapidly down the hall toward the gun storage room, still yelling “Sheriff’s Department,” then saw Gorio standing in the bedroom doorway with a gun pointed at him.

“I said, ‘He’s got a gun, he’s got a gun,’ ” the deputy said.

As Furmanski ducked into the gun room, he heard the sound of Gorio’s gun going off behind him.

About two seconds later, he said, he came back out of the gun room and saw Gorio’s hand extended from the doorway, still pointing the gun. Fearing for his own safety and that of his partners still behind him in the hallway, “I pulled the trigger on my MP-5 for a second or two,” he said. “I heard my gun going off and saw Glenn Gorio disappearing behind the door.”

But Yagman claims that the spray of bullet casings found at the scene prove that the shooting could not have happened the way Furmanski described it.

Six bullet holes found on the wall of Gorio’s bedroom indicate that the deputy had to have fired at Gorio--and probably hit him--before he ever reached the gun room, he said.

“That also explains the fact that some deputies testified they heard two bursts of machine-gun fire,” Yagman said. “It means that while Furmanski was firing, Gorio fired.”

And what of the deputy’s claim that he saw Gorio’s hand extended with the gun through the bedroom door as he peered out of the gun room?

“He’s lying,” Yagman said.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office investigated the shooting and concluded that it was justified, ruling that physical evidence at the scene and statements of a number of witnesses interviewed, most of them other deputies, back up Furmanski’s version of the shooting.

“The use of deadly force was reasonably necessary to prevent Gorio from shooting Deputy Furmanski or the other deputies,” the district attorney’s investigators concluded.

Now, it will be up to a jury to decide whether Gorio thought that he was protecting himself from burglars or whether he knew that there were sheriff’s deputies in the hallway. Why, Gorio’s family asks, would he have knowingly fired on more than two-dozen heavily armed sheriff’s deputies?

‘Criminal Mind’

“You’re asking a question that has to be asked about any criminal mind. Why do criminals think they can get away with their unlawful behavior? Why do people try to shoot it out with the police, even when they’re outnumbered? There’s no logical answer for that,” Serritella said.

“There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Gorio knew exactly who he was dealing with, and for some unknown and irrational reason, decided he could shoot it out with the sheriffs and win,” Serritella said. “But he was wrong.”