May 30, 2008, 8:34PM
SWAT scene at Houston home ends; man still at large


By LINDSAY WISE and JENNIFER LEAHY
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle


Indictment against alleged gang members An FBI SWAT situation at a southeast Houston home is over and authorities are still looking for an alleged gang member who faces drug trafficking charges.

Authorities believed that 33-year-old Juan Manuel Hernandez, aka Meme, had barricaded himself alone inside the home in the 4100 block of Erie. SWAT members arrived there about 2 p.m planning to arrest him.

Authorities later entered the home and determined Hernandez was not inside. The search was called off about 8:25 p.m. Authorities said no shots were fired, but would not elaborate on how agents entered the home.

Hernandez is considered armed and dangerous, authorities said. He is an alleged member of of the Los Hermanos de Pistoleros (HPL), a gang formed in the mid-1980s in the Texas prison system by Latino inmates.

Twenty-one of 24 members or associates of the gang were arrested early Friday morning in Laredo, Beeville and Houston.

They are charged in a 12-count indictment returned under seal by a Houston grand jury Wednesday that accuses them of receiving cocaine smuggled into the United States from Mexico, storing the contraband in Laredo area stash houses and transporting and distributing the cocaine to Houston beginning in 2001.
The arrests come at the end of a four-year joint investigation conducted by the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Houston Police Department, the Harris County Sheriff's Office and other local and federal agencies.

Nine of the 21 arrested are from Houston. They are Mark Barrera, 28; Marino Duran, 46; Manuel Bernard Harris, 38; Albert Lema, 28; Robert Luis Alvarez, 25; Roberto Navarrete, Jr., 37; Marvyn Ramdeen, 26; Pacino Sanmiguel, 31; and Brian Michael Washington, 21.

lindsay.wise@chron.com





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