Massachusetts SWAT Team Kills Armed Man in Drug Raid

Members of a Massachusetts SWAT team serving a search warrant in a pre-dawn drug raid Wednesday in the town of Orange shot and killed the apartment resident after he allegedly confronted them with a weapon. Corey Navarette, 23, becomes the 20^th person to die in US domestic drug law enforcement operations so far this year, and the fifth in the past two weeks.

According to the Boston Globe, relying on police sources, members of the State Police Special Tactical Operations Team (STOP), a paramilitarized SWAT-style unit, shot and killed Navarette around 5:00am as they tried to search his apartment. When troopers entered the apartment, He "pointed an assault rifle at them and refused commands to submit," said State Police spokesman David Procopio. "A trooper or troopers discharged service weapons in response and struck the suspect."

Navarette was given first aid at the scene, but was later pronounced dead at a local hospital. A 25-year-old woman who also lived in the apartment "suffered an eye injury" during the incident, the Globe noted without further elaboration.

Procopio did not reveal whether it was a "no-knock" search, where police make forcible entry with little or no notice, but he did say the STOP team was deployed because "detectives had direct and credible intelligence that the suspect had indicated that he had firearms and would use them," Procopio said.

The two-story Mechanic Street property where the apartment was located has been on the radar of police for some time. In November 2011, a resident shot another man with a handgun hidden in the apartment. In May, police raided the building, seizing heroin, a scale, packaging materials, and five shotguns, and arresting the building manager.

The use of deadly force by state troopers is under investigation by Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan.