A Texas woman may set a new legal precedent for when police destroy bystanders’ property
The SWAT team smashed Vicki Baker’s brand-new fence, shot dozens of tear gas canisters through the walls, windows and roof, and used what Baker describes as a “bomb” to blow off the garage door. The goal, police later told her, was to create confusion and to shock their target.
But Baker was not the suspect in a crime and in fact was more than 1,000 miles away when police destroyed her home in McKinney, Texas. Now the 78-year-old cancer survivor is at the center of a landmark federal court ruling ordering the city of McKinney to pay nearly $60,000 in damages for destroying her house while pursuing a fugitive.
Baker had packed up a portion of her belongings and moved to Montana in summer 2020 for her retirement. The sale of her McKinney house was almost final.
But on July 25, while Baker was in Montana, a handyman she had hired two years previously took refuge in her home after kidnapping a teen girl. Baker’s daughter fled the house and called 911 while Wesley Little remained inside with the teen and a backpack full of guns, Baker said.
Police swarmed the home. Little eventually released the 15-year-old girl, but refused to surrender, telling police he would not come out alive.
So a SWAT team moved in, unleashing a barrage of tear gas explosions from all directions.
“What I was told is the reason they did a lot of that was to bring about confusion to the perpetrator inside,” Baker told Fox News. “They call it shock and awe.”
“While they were doing all of this damage to my house, [Little] apparently killed himself,” she continued.Every window had to be replaced. Doors had been smashed and tear gas canisters had punched holes in the drywall.
No one knows exactly how many innocent citizens have their property damaged or destroyed by police each year, but Redfern said he hears about large scale damage “every few months.”
Baker hopes her case will help others.
“I feel we will win this thing,” she said. “I feel God is on our side.”
