# @downinnadesert on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DbW44X0mv8z
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/68548251-downinnadesert-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/975925a3f4.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-07-29T01:02:40.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Down In The Desert🌵 (@downinnadesert) — https://gondola.cc/downinnadesert

## Caption

He called 911 two days early to tell them this was coming.

Axeel Melendez was 23, playing video games at his home outside Tucson, when strangers hacked him on April 8 and started threatening him over his personal information. He called 911 and told a dispatcher they were planning to phone in a fake emergency at his address. The dispatcher told him that wasn’t how it worked and nothing was going to happen. A Pima County deputy came out to the house that same day, took his statement and told him there was nothing to worry about.

At 5:40 a.m. on April 10, someone claiming to be Axeel called and reported that his father had fired at his sister. Deputies rolled up believing a girl had been struck inside. Body camera video shows a deputy breaking a back window into Axeel’s bedroom. Axeel and his mother Carmen were inside and did not know who was breaking in. His attorneys say he grabbed the family’s legally registered handgun and hid, trying to protect her.

Deputies fired eight shots, according to the notice of claim. Two hit him. He has a T4 spinal cord injury, he is paralyzed from the chest down, and he spent his 24th birthday in a hospital bed. Carmen says she reached him on the floor and he told her he loved her.

Here is the part that sticks. The deputy who came out on April 8 wrote in his own report that he told Axeel if any emergency calls came in about that address, Axeel would be contacted first and would just need to explain that he’d been hacked. Then he told his supervisor. Two days later nobody did any of that.

Axeel and Carmen filed a notice of claim seeking $320 million from Pima County and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. In Arizona that filing has to sit for 60 days before a lawsuit can go forward. The sheriff’s department says it does not comment on pending litigation.

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#Tucson #Arizona #PimaCounty #Swatting #ArizonaNews

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## Tags

swatting, arizonanews, tucson, arizona, pimacounty

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