An Egg Harbor City couple who said their children were traumatized when their house was accidentally raided in 2017, are suing the agencies involved.
Carla Weldon and Troy Sessom filed a suit in Atlantic County Civil Court alleging seven counts, including trespassing, intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault and negligence.
The couple and six children ages 1 to 15 were in the Cincinnati Avenue home at about 6:24 a.m. March 30, 2017, when nearly a dozen officers came into the home.
Their target was actually the couple’s neighbors, who were arrested as part of a raid that ended up resulting in 16 arrests, 21 firearms, more than 10,000 bags of heroin in fentanyl and 10 ounces of cocaine.
But inside this home were children getting ready for school.
Weldon came downstairs to find her 15- and 12-year-old cousins who the couple was fostering with guns pointed at them, she told BreakingAC at the time.
The girls’ younger sisters, then 10 and 7, were on the couch crying.
At one point, according to the suit, an officer came down the stairs holding the couple’s 2-year-old daughter. Their 1-year-old son slept through the events.
A door wound up getting broken when an officer forced it open, they told BreakingAC at the time.
“Amid the chaos and confusion of this police raid, one or more (of the officers) asked why a bedroom door on the second floor was locked,” the suit states.
When Weldon told them she didn’t believe it was locked, “one of the defendant officers cursed at her, and told her to stop lying, and/or that Weldon was ‘f----in’ lying,’ or words to this effect,’” the suit states.
The officers’ conduct “was extreme and outrageous including but not limited to the act of pointing loaded firearms at children whom defendants could not reasonably have believed were engaged in criminal activity,” according to the suit.
The couple’s attorney, Louis Shapiro, declined to comment on the case.
The suit was filed March 25. No response has yet been filed.
It has been assigned to Superior Court Judge Mary Siracusa.
