HOUSTON, Texas – It’s been six years since experts say a botched raid took the lives of a Houston couple and revealed systemic corruption within the Houston Police Department’s narcotics unit.
The Harding Street Raid, which is referred to by many, occurred on Jan. 28, 2019, when Houston police officers raided a house on Harding Street in the Pecan Park neighborhood in what was believed to be a part of a drug investigation.
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In September, Gerald Goines, the officer accused of murder for his role in the Harding Street Raid, will go to trial.
Goines pleaded not guilty to two felony murder counts for the January 2019 deaths of a married couple, Dennis Tuttle, 59, and Rhogena Nicholas, 58, and their family dog.
KPRC 2 Investigates team Reporter Mario Diaz, Senior Investigates Producer Jason Nguyen, Senior Special Projects Producer Andrea Slaydon, and Digital Content Specialist Ninfa Saavedra will be live at the trial dishing out the latest updates for ‘The Bench: Gerald Goines.’
What Happened
On Jan. 28, 2019, Houston police officers raided the home of Tuttle and Nicholas.
When the officers first entered the home (in plain clothes and using a no-knock warrant) they were met by a dog they described as “aggressive,” and was ultimately shot and killed by a responding officer.
Former Police Chief Art Acevedo, who was HPD’s top cop at the time of the deadly raid, said Tuttle walked out of a back room of the home and used a .357 revolver to start shooting at the officers, wounding one of them. Acevedo said that as the wounded officer fell on a living room couch, 58-year-old Rhogena Nicholas tried to grab his weapon.
Officers fired back, killing both Tuttle and his wife, Nicholas.
Four HPD officers were shot during the raid with another injuring his knee.
In the weeks following the deaths of Tuttle and Nicholas, the fallout of the raid came quickly after KPRC 2 Investigates uncovered legal documents showing HPD entered the home on a bogus warrant created by former narcotics officer Goines.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg charged Goines with murder in August 2019. He was also accused of lying about several other drug cases over the years.
KPRC 2 leading coverage on Harding Street raid
Since the raid’s first reports in 2019, KPRC 2 Investigates dug deeper into what happened and why, which led to several big reveals.
On Feb. 15, 2019, nearly a month after the raid, KPRC 2 Investigates found an affidavit that showed the Houston police officers manufactured an unlawful warrant, which gave officers the green light to go inside Tuttle and Nicholas’ home without knocking.
In March 2019, KPRC 2 Investigates learned that Angel August, an HPD officer involved in the Harding Street Raid internal investigation was relieved of duty.
Around the same time, KPRC 2 also reported on a questionable 911 call. On Jan. 31, 2019, Acevedo described the call: “The officer wrote a detailed note within the call slip history to document their actions, what they had learned and what they had done.”
KPRC 2 Investigates then looked into the officer’s call slip and discovered it had no details and no police report was filed after that 911 call.
On April 16, 2019, KPRC 2 Investigates was the first to tour the inside of the Harding Street home.
What has happened since?
Since the deadly raid, finding justice for the Tuttle and Nicholas families has not been easy.
Months after the deadly raid, two former HPD officers were charged, Gerald Goines for murder and Steven Bryant for tampering with a government document. The woman who made the false 911 call, Patricia Garcia was also charged with reporting false information.
Officials say on Jan. 8, Garcia, the Harding Street victim’s neighbor, made a series of 911 calls they believe set off the chain of events culminating in the botched raid 20 days later. She allegedly told officials her daughter was inside the home with heavily armed drug dealers. She was accused of falsely reporting the people in the home were doing crack cocaine and heroin.
Garcia was later sentenced to 40 months in federal prison in 2021.
Additionally, Harris County D.A. Kim Ogg said Goines lied in the affidavit used to obtain a no-knock warrant that was executed at the home and led to the deadly shooting.
According to court documents, Goines made a “false entry in a record, document, and tangible object with intent to impede, obstruct, and influence the investigation and proper administration of the matter within federal jurisdiction.” He is also accused of making a tactical plan and executing it while knowing there were false statements in it, “including that a confidential informant purchased heroin from 7815 Harding Street on Jan. 27.” Bryant was accused of lying in a supplemental report filed two days after the raid.
In 2020, then-Mayor Sylvester Turner signed an executive order banning no-knock raids unless the police chief personally signed off.
In 2021, KPRC 2 learned that 12 officers were charged in connection to the raid. Most of the 12 officers were charged with overtime theft, and tampering with evidence and Goines and Felipe Gallegos were charged with murder.
Gallegos’ murder charge was eventually dropped due to a former prosecutor’s conduct, stating that the prosecutor “raised concerns about this judgment” while working the case.
In June 2024, the judge overseeing many charges against several other officers quashed multiple charges. Specifically, nine of the officers who were charged in an alleged overtime scheme related to the raid had their charges thrown out. Some of the officers are still charged with tampering with government records and theft.
The accused officers were Hodgie Armstrong, Nadeem Ashraf, Felipe Gallegos, Cedell Lovings, Griff Maxwell, Frank Medina, Oscar Pardo, Clemente Reyna and Thomas Wood.
The judge ruled that the indictments were too broad. She made a similar ruling on the Goines murder charge as well, but the District Attorney’s Office presented the case once again in front of a grand jury, and Goines was indicted again for murder.
Bryant, who was charged with tampering with a government document, pleaded guilty in federal court in 2021 but he has still not been sentenced.
Goines’ trial is expected to begin on September 9, 2024.