SAN ANTONIO – A team made up of federal agents, state troopers and San Antonio police officers descended on a home on the city’s North Side early Tuesday morning — but the raid wasn’t exactly unexpected, according to people who live in the area.
Neighbors noticed a lot of unfamiliar cars as law enforcement officers closed in on the home in the 2400 block of Garden Meadow, not far from Thousand Oaks Drive and Henderson Pass.
Joe Martinez, who lives just down the street, said he only became aware of the commotion after a contractor he had hired called saying he was unable to access the closed street.
“I walk out, and it’s littered,” Martinez said. “The big hazmat truck was over there, the smaller hazmat vehicle was over there, the trailer. Then at the very end over there, it was just littered with police officers.”
Martinez said he had noticed some odd behavior there in the past.
“I’d come home late, and there’d be always women in their pajamas. They’d be, like, at a car, leaning in, talking to them,” he said.
Another neighbor who wanted to remain anonymous echoed Martinez’s sentiments, saying she knew something just wasn’t right.
“Comings and goings at all hours of the evenings and night,” the neighbor said. “And just not the same cars that were there all the time — different cars that were there.”
A spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration confirmed that the agency was conducting the operation with help from San Antonio police and the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The spokeswoman said they were acting on a federal warrant related to narcotics.
Neighbor Marisu Millhollan said she had a hint that the raid was coming.
For the past few weeks, Millhollan said she had noticed undercover detectives camped out in the neighborhood, some in the alley behind her home.
At one point, she said a relative confronted the detectives, wondering why they were lurking in the area.
“They said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not you. It’s not the house across the way,’ and I said, ‘OK, well,’ then we just left it at that,” Millhollan said.
Millhollan said she was glad to see the final outcome of the surveillance, and she hopes it will mean an end to any other unusual activity in the neighborhood.
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