HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) — Imagine this: you’re woken up by loud knocking at your door, and as you open your door with a gun, you realize it’s not robbers but deputies who have surrounded your home.
An east Harris County man says it happened to him, and he was hauled off to jail because of it.
Deputy bodycam video shows deputies with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office surrounding the home of Dean Dietsch in December 2023.
Dietsch said he was sleeping and initially thought he was being robbed.
“They had their guns out and are hiding behind a tree. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God. They want to come get me for some reason.’ I get my squirrel rifle and my single-shot shotgun,” Dietsch said. “I come out with a shotgun raised, trying to defend my home.”
That’s when it all escalated. Video shows deputies started screaming at him to drop his guns.
Dietsch closes the garage door, puts his gun inside, and comes back outside.
Deputies yell at him to lie on the ground. Then, he was handcuffed and charged with aggravated assault against a public servant.
“My mind was obviously, ‘They had the wrong address,’ because I’m just sleeping, waiting to go to iHOP in the morning,” he said. “I didn’t get to go to iHOP. I got to go to jail for a couple of days.”
According to the sheriff’s office, deputies were called out to Dietsch’s address on a disturbance call.
But Dietsch believes the caller got the address wrong.
He thinks the call may have been meant for a home nearby where his neighbors had been throwing a large party.
It took seven months for the felony charge against Dietsch to be dismissed.
“I’m in shock, of course,” he said. “I’m mad because what did I do?”
It’s a mental and financial shock.
Dietsch is still out more than $30,000 because he’s responsible for his attorney fees, and the bond he paid is non-refundable because he had to go through a bond company to afford it.
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