A woman is suing Monroeville and Pittsburgh police departments after police raided and searched her home while looking for a suspect.
“By the time I got to the bottom of the steps I turned around and looked and there was already SWAT in my house,” said Kelly Angell, the victim of the SWAT raid.
Kelly Angell, her boyfriend, and five young children, one of whom is autistic, were all at home on the morning of January 22.
“It was Sunday, we were cooking and cleaning,” Angell explained.
She said two dozen police officers ransacked her home, breaking the windows, destroying furniture, and clothes, and even throwing gas grenades into the home.
“There was so much glass,” she recalled.
The family was forced out into the freezing cold for hours.
“We had on short sleeves and shorts, no shoes, no socks, no coat no anything,” Angell said.
Police were searching for Daronte Brown, a teenage suspect wanted for a shooting in Monroeville.
According to police, Brown’s phone pinged near Angell’s home and they believed he was hidden inside.
“I don’t know the boy I had never in my life seen the boy until they showed me a picture of him,” Angell said.
Angell said they got the wrong house and terrorized an innocent family.
“They contaminated the entire house with tear gas that’s not the kind of thing we can allow to go on as a routine practice,” said Maggie Coleman, Angell’s attorney.
The family has filed a federal lawsuit against Monroeville and Pittsburgh police whose SWAT team assisted that night. We contacted the mayor’s office and Pittsburgh police. Both declined to comment, while Monroeville PD did not respond.
Angell said she just wants justice.
“They can go home with their kids and live normal lives, my life will never be normal,” Angell said.