Why Were Swat Teams Created Swat Team Injures Baby in Crib
Family of Toddler Injured by SWAT 'Grenade' Faces $1M in Medical Bills
Niggling Bou Bou Phonesavanh has undergone multiple surgeries since the incident.
— -- Alecia and Bounkham Phonesavanh never imagined their family would be at the center of a controversy over the militarization of police. But that'south exactly where they found themselves when their toddler was seriously injured by a SWAT team, also leaving them with a $one million medical pecker they accept no promise of paying.
"They messed up," Alecia Phonesavanh told ABC News' "20/xx." "They had a faulty search warrant. They raided the incorrect firm."
Scout the full story on ABC News' "xx/twenty" Friday, Dec. nineteen at 10 p.grand. ET
In the bound of 2014, the Phonesavanh'due south home in Janesville, Wisconsin, was destroyed past burn down. Homeless with iv immature children, they packed one of their last remaining possessions – their minivan – and drove 850 miles to the home of Bounkham's sister in Cornelia, Georgia.
The family unit crowded into a former garage converted into a bedroom: parents Bounkham and Alecia, 7-year-old Emma, 5-twelvemonth-sometime Mali, 3-year-old Charlie and 18-month-sometime Bounkham Jr., known as "Bou Bou." It was a tight clasp only only temporary. Later on two months the family had found a new business firm in Wisconsin and was planning to return home.
At approximately 2 a.m. May 28, the family awakened to a blinding wink and loud explosion in their sleeping accommodation. A Special Response Team (aka SWAT squad) from the Habersham Canton Sheriff's Office burst unannounced into the chamber where they were sleeping. According to police reports, Habersham Deputy Charles Long threw a "flash-bang" grenade – a diversionary device used by police and military – into the room. Information technology landed in Bou Bou's pack-and-play.
"Bou Bou started screaming," recalls Alecia Phonesavanh. "I immediately went to grab him."
But Alecia says Habersham Deputy Jason Stribling picked up the child before she could reach him. "I kept telling him, 'Just requite me my son. He's scared. He needs me. The officeholder wouldn't. And so he walked out of the room with [Bou Bou] and I didn't see him again."
What they didn't realize at the time was that the smash from the wink-bang grenade severely burned Bou Bou'south face and body and collapsed his left lung. Alecia says the officers wouldn't permit her to see her kid before he was whisked away in an ambulance.
"I asked if he got injure. And they said, 'No, your son is fine. He has not sustained whatever serious injury," Alecia Phonesavanh remembers. "They ended upwards telling u.s.a. that he had lost a tooth."
But her husband became alarmed after seeing a pool of blood and the status of the crib. "Burnt marks on the bottom of the crib where he sleep[s]," recalls Bounkham Phonesavanh. "And the pillow diddled apart."
Bou Bou was rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta where doctors placed him in a medically induced coma. "His breast wall had torn down to muscle," says Dr. Walter Ingram, caput of Grady's fire trauma unit. "And it tore his face down to bone, down to his teeth."
Bou Bou'south parents say they were detained past the police force for nearly two hours. When they arrived at the hospital they were shocked to learn the truth about their son'southward injuries. "Why couldn't [the police] only be honest with us and tell united states what happened?" asked Alecia Phonesavanh.
It all came virtually because a drug task force had been looking for Bounkham Phonesavanh's nephew, xxx-year-old Wanis Thonetheva, who police suspected was selling methamphetamine. Using information from a confidential informant, drug agent Nikki Autry had secured a "no-knock" search warrant that allowed the police force to enter his mother's home unannounced.
According to the warrant application, the informant had allegedly purchased drugs from Thonetheva at his mother'due south house where the Phonesavnah'south were staying.
The use of "no knock" warrants has get controversial, co-ordinate to Atlanta-based community activist Marcus Coleman. "At that place needs to exist a strict criteria before you're able to knock someone's door down in the eye of the night," says Coleman. "Nosotros also have to await existent hard at how the police force has been militarized and what does that hateful for your ordinary citizen."
Equally Bou Bou lay in the hospital, agent Nikki Autry resigned from her job with the Mount Judicial Circuit's drug unit. Approximate James Butterworth, the chief magistrate of Habersham County, who signed the "no-knock" warrant, announced his retirement within days of the raid.
The search warrant had identified his mother's domicile every bit Wanis Thonetheva's "residence." Merely Alecia Phonesavanh says they never saw Thonetheva while they were staying in Georgia. She says his female parent did suspect that her son had stolen valuables from her.
"He had cleaved into her room and stole some of her jewelry and stuff," recalls Alecia Phonesavanh. "Nosotros knew him as a thief."
Wanis Thonetheva was arrested hours later on the raid without a "no-knock" warrant and without a SWAT team. He pleaded guilty to selling methamphetamine and is serving a 10-year sentence in a Georgia prison.
Later on more than five weeks in a coma, Bou Bou left the hospital and the family was relieved that they could finally render to Wisconsin.
In Georgia, Habersham Canton'due south Commune Attorney Brian Rickman convened a grand jury to look into the botched police raid. After six days of testimony, the grand jury found "the drug investigation that led to these events was hurried, sloppy."
They did not recommend criminal charges against any of the officers involved, which deeply upsets Bou Bou's mother. "They made the mistake," claims Alecia Phonesavanh. "And we got the backlash of everything."
"The intelligence on the front end, in this detail situation," says Commune Attorney Rickman, "is how the tragedy could have been avoided."
The drug chore forcefulness that gathered that intelligence was disbanded four months afterwards the raid that injured Bou Bou Phonesavanh. It also happened to be the mean solar day later "xx/xx" arrived in Habersham County to investigate.
Since the incident, the toddler has undergone surgeries to repair his confront and torso. The Phonesavanh family says they are facing close to $ane million in debt from hospital costs. Habersham Canton officials will not pay the medical bills, citing a "gratuity" law in Georgia that prohibits them from compensating the family unit.
Merely the Phonesavanh's attorney, Mawuli Davis, believes the SWAT team's actions during and after the raid brand it accountable.
"The child was taken into their custody," says Davis. "Taken from his family unit, equally a result of an injury that was caused past the [sheriff's department]. It would exist our position that they should have to pay, and it is far from a gratuity."
Under the state's law, the county government has sovereign immunity from negligence claims against it, and thus the payment would exist an illegal "gratuity" to the family unit.
As the holidays approach, the Phonesavanh family is mired in debt with medical bills they have no promise of paying. "Before this nosotros didn't owe anybody anything," says Alecia Phonesavanh. "And at present later all this, they have completely financially crippled u.s.."
Who is responsible for Bou Bou Phonesavanh'due south injuries may still be a question for the courts to make up one's mind. The Phonesavanh family still has the option to file a civil lawsuit. And a federal investigation is at present underway by the office of Sally Yates, U.S. Chaser for the Northern Commune of Georgia.
"Equally a parent, I can't imagine the horrible nightmare that this family is enduring," Yates said in a statement to ABC News. "Now that the country yard jury has declined to render an indictment, nosotros are reviewing the matter and conducting our own investigation."
The Phonesavanh family has set up a website to share their story and enhance money for Bou Bou's medical expenses. Click here for more information.
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/family-toddler-injured-swat-grenade-faces-1m-medical/story?id=27671521
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