Cops Stormed Into a Terrified Seattle Woman’s Home. It Was the Wrong Address.
In November 2020, 45-year-old Elisabeth Rehn was preparing for a bath when five Seattle police officers broke down her door and streamed into her apartment. She barely had time to throw a coat over herself when she was stormed by the officers, who shouted commands and pointed their guns at her.
However, the officers had no reason to enter Rehn’s apartment. According to a lawsuit filed last month, the police had gone to the wrong address. They weren’t even in the correct building.
“Even after [police] knew or should have known that they had broken down the door of the wrong apartment, in the wrong building, the Defendants still continued to needlessly search her apartment while Ms. Rehn trembled in fear,” the complaint states.
According to The Seattle Times, the officers believed they were responding to a “crisis call” about an intoxicated man who may have been attempting to push someone out of a window. While other first responders were able to reach the correct address, a second group of officers ended up in a different apartment building, where they mistakenly stormed Rehn’s apartment.
Body camera footage shows the officers kicking Rehn’s door in and rushing into her apartment with guns drawn. The officers are also captured searching through her apartment while Rehn sobs and trembles in fear.
The officers’ “actions put Ms. Rehn in mortal fear that she was going to be assaulted or killed in this incident through no fault of her own,” reads the complaint. “She was about to take a bath in her own apartment at the time, had disrobed in preparation for getting into he
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