Texas police destroyed cancer survivor’s house, legal maneuver may force the city to pay

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By Fox News

April 18, 2023 | 5:16pm

The SWAT group smashed Vicki Baker’s brand-new fence, shot dozens of tear fuel canisters thru the partitions, home windows and roof, and used what she describes as a “bomb” to blow off the storage door.

The purpose, police later advised her, used to be to create confusion and to surprise their goal.

But Baker used to be now not the suspect in against the law and in reality used to be greater than 1,000 miles away when police destroyed her house in McKinney, Texas.

Now the 78-year-old cancer survivor is at the middle of a landmark federal court docket ruling ordering the city of McKinney to pay just about $60,000 in damages for destroying her residence whilst pursuing a fugitive.

Baker had packed up a portion of her property and moved to Montana in the summer time of 2020 for her retirement.

The sale of her McKinney residence used to be virtually ultimate.

But on July 25, whilst Baker used to be in Montana, a handyman she had employed two years up to now took shelter in her house after kidnapping an adolescent lady.

Baker’s daughter fled the residence and referred to as 911 whilst Wesley Little remained inside of with the teenager and a backpack stuffed with weapons, Baker stated.

Police swarmed the house.

Little sooner or later launched the 15-year-old lady however refused to give up, telling police he would now not pop out alive.

So a SWAT team moved in, unleashing a barrage of tear fuel explosions from all instructions.

“What I was told is the reason they did a lot of that was to bring about confusion to the perpetrator inside,” Baker advised Fox News.

“They call it shock and awe.”

“While they were doing all of this damage to my house, [Little] apparently killed himself,” she persisted.

Every window had to get replaced.

Doors were smashed and tear fuel canisters had punched holes in the drywall.

“A hazmat team threw everything out,” Baker stated.

“They had two huge containers in front of my house and both were filled.”

Furniture, garments, Baker’s highschool yearbooks, her mom’s doll assortment, and antiques all had to be thrown away as a result of they had been so saturated with tear fuel, she stated.

The tear fuel and explosions left her daughter’s Chihuahua blind, deaf and unwell.

The canine sooner or later had to be put down.

The purchaser sponsored out. The injury totaled a minimum of $50,000. 

Baker’s insurance coverage corporate refused to quilt the bulk of the injury as a result of her coverage — like maximum — excludes injury led to by means of the govt.

Baker attempted to document a belongings injury declare with the city, however officers refused to pay, bringing up certified immunity, a doctrine steadily used to defend police and different govt businesses from being sued for violating folks’s rights or destroying belongings right through the direction in their paintings.

“‘We’ve never paid a claim like this,’” Baker recollects a city worker telling her.

“‘You won’t get a dime.’ Those were her exact words.”

She stated she laid on the sofa crying for days.

“I was forced into semi-retirement, mostly retirement when the cancer came,” she stated.

“My house was no longer sold. I couldn’t pay off this property.”

When the Institute for Justice took Baker’s case, legal professional Jeffrey Redfern attempted to keep away from immunity solely.

“It’s a very good thing that the police got this guy off the street, and nobody’s disputing that,” Redfern stated.

“It’s just about who has to bear the cost of that.”

He argued police seized Baker’s belongings below the Takings Clause, similar to with eminent area when the govt would possibly grasp any person’s house to construct a street or different infrastructure.

Redfern stated the city had a proper to take the house, however that Baker should be compensated.

A federal judge agreed, and a jury awarded Baker $59,656.59 in damages.

But since the city of McKinney appealed that call, Baker nonetheless hasn’t noticed a dime.

The city maintains that the destruction of personal belongings thru police operations can’t represent a Fifth Amendment violation.

The case can be argued sooner than the fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in early June.

If the Appeals Court aspects with Baker, it is going to create a break up choice with the 10th Circuit in Colorado, which up to now dominated an area police division didn’t have to compensate a person whose residence used to be destroyed right through a gun struggle between officials and a shoplifting suspect.

“That raises the odds of a Supreme Court review,” Redfern stated.

No one is aware of precisely what number of blameless electorate have their belongings broken or destroyed by means of police each and every 12 months, however Redfern stated he hears about large-scale injury “every few months.”

Baker hopes her case will assist others.

“I feel we will win this thing,” she stated. “I feel God is on our side.”