Two sheriff's offices in North Carolina are being sued by a family that says its home was destroyed when a SWAT team tossing flash-bang grenades raided the wrong house. The filing by Alisa Carr and Avery Marshall says that during the traumatizing midnight raid, officers took their children, ages 9 and 16, "from their bedrooms and threatened them with military-grade firearms" while their parents "begged the officers to stop," Law & Crime reports. At one point, the younger child was ordered to lie down on broken glass with a gun and laser scope light pointed at his face, the complaint says. "All I could do was yell 'he's 9 years old,'" Marshall said, per the News & Observer.
The suit, filed in federal court in North Carolina, says the house became the target in April 2024 because officers were looking for a suspect driving a Nissan, and Carr's Nissan was parked outside. But her car was a different model, was registered at the house, and had a different license number and VIN, the filing says. "The officers did not do their due diligence," according to the suit, by telling the magistrate who issued a warrant that Carr's vehicle was the one they were searching for. The family says Verizon cellphone location data apparently showed the suspect was in the area.
The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, names Pender County, Pender County Sheriff Alan Cutler, nearby Lee County, Lee County Sheriff Brian Estes, and several deputies. The home is still a wreck, the filing says, and the family cannot afford the repairs. It had been built less than a year before after the couple's former house on the site was damaged by a storm, per the News & Observer. "I don't even feel safe living in my own home anymore because of what happened that night," Carr said in a statement. The next day, the suspect deputies were looking for in a series of vehicle break-ins was arrested in another county, said the nonprofit Institute for Justice, which is representing the family. (More North Carolina stories.)
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