Family Files Complaint Over Botched Bust

An Othello family claims in a federal lawsuit that heavily armed, masked city police officers mistakenly broke into their home and terrorized them in a botched drug raid three years ago.

The police negligently failed to note that their search warrant specified the apartment across the hall from theirs, Juan and Ana Izarraraz say in a complaint filed this week in U.S. District Court in Spokane.

Police Chief William McDonnell, who is named in the suit along with five of his officers, was not immediately available for comment.

The lawsuit says the couple and their teenage son, Enrique, and their daughter, Ana Rios, and her husband and two children were in the apartment when the raid occurred on Nov. 24, 1992. Some of them were still in bed, the suit says.

Juan and Ana Izarraraz say they were talking in the kitchen and didn’t hear anyone knock or say anything before the door burst open. A group of men in ski masks and camouflaged clothing rushed in and pointed automatic weapons at family members, they say.

The lawsuit says the officers’ clothing didn’t identify them as police, and Enrique was the only family member who could understand what the officers were yelling. Officers were particularly zealous about pointing a rifle or shotgun at his head, the family claims.

Ana Izarraraz was so afraid for her life and her son’s that she went into shock and fainted, the suit says. She suffered possible neurological damage and post-traumatic stress disorder, the suit says. The family is seeking unspecified damages.

, DataTimes