More bad press for the Chicago Police Department.
This time the CPD find themselves having to explain how and why they managed to send an 82-year-old great grandmother to the hospital after allegedly raiding her home by mistake.
According to ABC 7 Chicago, the incident happened earlier this week when police were issued a warrant for Elizabeth Harrison’s home. Police say they had the proper authority to search Harrison’s home for the man they were after even though she had no idea who the man was and lives there alone.
The widowed woman told reporters she thought she would have a heart attack when police busted through her front door with guns drawn.
“They wanted me to produce this young man that they were looking for,” said Harrison. “And they would not take no for an answer that I didn’t know him.”
Harrison’s daughter, Linda Channel, lives down the block and rushed to her mother’s home when she caught wind of the commotion. She says she arrived to find her mother shaken and breathing irregularly.
“They had her sitting in a chair, and her breathing was like (heavy breathing sounds,)” she re-enacted. “I almost had a heart attack.”
Channel says she was still on the scene speaking with officers about the damage done to her mother’s house when the man that police were looking for walked up to them and confirmed the officers had the wrong house.
“‘You all came to the wrong house. I live at 126, and this is 136,’” Channel quoted the man as saying.
Amazingly, despite finding nothing at Harrison’s home and having the man in question literally walk up to them and inform them they had searched the wrong house, a spokesperson for CPD maintains they were at the right address. Nonetheless, maybe as a show of humility, authorities have agreed to replace Harrison’s front door that was badly damaged in the raid.
Harrison, who is still in the hospital while doctors continue to monitor her heart, says she is still in disbelief about the incident.
“I always tell my young people, ‘respect the law,’ ” she said. “But to have them come in and do what they did to me, something is wrong. Really wrong.
