Avery Marshall (Right) and Alisa Carr (Left) stand outside their home in Willard, NC (Image courtesy of Institute for Justice).
A North Carolina family is suing two sheriff’s offices for destroying their Pender County home and traumatizing them after a SWAT team mistakenly raided their house.
Alisa Carr and her fiance Avery Marshall said officers descended on their house in April 2024, using flash-bang grenades, shattering glass, and aiming guns at their children as they were forced out of their bedrooms and interrogated.
The family’s April 1 complaint details what it called a “terrorizing scene” shortly after midnight on April 10, 2024, which was in part captured on video:
Officers from the sheriff’s offices of Lee County and Pender County stormed into the family’s quiet home, shouting profanities, shattering a glass door, busting through a metal door, and detonating flash-bang grenades. Officers made Avery lie face-down, shirtless, on top of the shattered glass with a gun pointed at his head. An officer also stepped on Avery’s back, on exposed stitches where Avery had recently undergone back surgery.
The family’s children, aged 9 and 16, were not spared the ordeal either, according to the complaint.
The filing alleged that “officers removed the kids from their bedrooms and threatened them with military-grade firearms,” while their parents “begged the officers to stop.”
