As soon as she heard the loud pops down the street, Sarah Sanchez rushed to the front door.

It sounded like gunshots — right outside 7815 Harding, the house where her neighbor Rhogena Nicholas lived.

“Reggie, are you OK?” Sanchez wondered.

When she took in the chaos and spotted officers in riot gear, Sanchez pulled out her phone and started recording. By then, investigators had already burst into the Pecan Park home, sparking a firefight that ended with the deaths of Nicholas and her husband, Dennis Tuttle, and left five officers injured.

Now Playing:

Sanchez provided the video and more than half-a-dozen others —the first extensive look into the aftermath of the raid — to the Houston Chronicle, sharing her recollections publicly even as she and other neighbors continue to come to grips with the incident that claimed their friends’ lives and has shaken their sense of safety.

The videos provide new insight into one of the bloodiest days in the history of the Houston Police Department — a botched raid that grew into a departmentwide scandal after Chief Art Acevedo said a veteran officer appeared to have lied on the search warrant used to justify the operation.

Even from far away, the videos underscore the chaos of the day. One clip captures the sound of two gunshots, while another shows a wounded officer limping away from the home. Other videos show an officer being wheeled to an ambulance, paramedics carrying another officer out on a stretcher, the SWAT team arriving at the scene and audio of futile entreaties for the occupants to come outside.

“Listen clearly to our instructions,” an officer says through a loudspeaker. “I guarantee you that no one will hurt you.”

Sirens and shocked onlookers

The videos pick up shortly after the shooting began and continue off and on for more than an hour. The first clip starts with Sanchez rushing to the door and telling her family to stay away. Minutes later, on another recording, she captured the sound of two gunshots. It’s not clear who fired or whether anyone was hit.

Shot through chain link fence several doors down, the videos also show police helping a fellow officer who appears to have trouble walking. One of the five officers who had to be hospitalized after the raid hurt his knee, police said later.

Captured over the sirens and the voices of shocked onlookers, subsequent recordings show paramedics wheeling one of the wounded officers into an ambulance and carrying a third officer across the street to the yard next door. As more patrol cars arrive, the first responders continue to treat that officer.

“My kids were playing a game and I thought it was their game,” Sanchez said, in one recording, after SWAT operators arrived.

A final video, taken after nightfall, captures the sound of breaking glass, when police finally broke through the windows and began searching the property.

Police launched the raid after allegedly receiving a tip the house was a drug den. But investigators only recovered a small amount of marijuana and cocaine — and none of the heroin they said they believed Tuttle was selling.

More than two months later, the ramifications of the raid continue to unfurl. Gerald Goines, the case agent at the center of the raid, has retired, along with another narcotics officer, Steven Bryant. Acevedo has launched criminal and internal investigations into the raid, and said multiple officers could face charges.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office has also launched a probe of the raid — along with a review of more than 2,200 cases that Goines and Bryant worked on — and the FBI opened a civil rights investigation into the incident. Acevedo has promised to dramatically curtail no-knock raids and equip raid teams with body cameras.

The videos provided to the Chronicle don’t appear to conflict with police accounts. They do still leave many questions unanswered, including what actually happened inside the house, who fired first, whether officers were injured by friendly fire and whether a confidential informant who Goines said made a controlled buy ever existed.

‘It gave us a fright’

Neighbors, however, remain skeptical of the long-standing police narrative that Nicholas and Tuttle were drug dealers, echoing similar reservations from her family members.

They seemed quiet and rarely had visitors, several neighbors said. Tuttle often stayed inside, while Nicholas was more sociable, lavishing her neighbors’ pets with attention and going out of her way to say hello.

“They were far from (drug dealers),” said Sanchez, who has lived on Harding Street for 18 years. Nicholas often watched the 42-year-old’s children and was a constant presence in her life, texting or calling to chat throughout the day. And she looked out for them when they were strapped for cash.

“She always made sure we had dinner,” Sanchez said. “She would even buy us cat food.”

Sanchez also questioned the claim that police spent two weeks surveilling the house. On a street as narrow and densely packed as Harding, she said, surveillance vehicles would have stood out.

“That can’t be true,” she said. “I would be the first one knocking — ‘Excuse me, excuse me, what are we doing? What are we looking at?’”

Sanchez also wondered about claims of frequent visitors in and out of the residence.

“Reggie was the only one in and out of the driveway,” she said. “There was nothing else more to that house.”

‘They’re supposed to protect us’

Emilio Alaniz, who lives across the street from Sanchez, agreed.

“There’s no traffic there,” he said. “They got the wrong house.”

Near the corner of Fennell and Harding, Veronica Jimenez said she and her husband had been painting the fencing around their house prior to the raid.

Moments after they finished and went inside, she heard a commotion and a helicopter overhead. That wasn’t so odd — they’re used to hearing helicopters because of nearby car crashes — but this time, it sounded like it was practically on top of their house.

She tried to go outside, only to find the street swarming with officers and patrol cars.

Like Sanchez, she is still trying to make sense of it all.

“It gave us a fright — but more than anything, of the police,” she said. “Because they’re supposed to protect us.”

st.john.smith@chron.com

keri.blakinger@chron.com