3 Children Injured After Police Threw a Flashbang Grenade at them During Search for Drugs

 

Santa Fe, NM — A family has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit this week after a raid on their home left their children, ages 9, 10, and 12, injured and traumatized.
In May of 2013, multiple FBI agents descended upon the home of Abel Romero Sr., who was suspected of being a “street level drug dealer.”
Instead of knocking, or checking to ensure that there were no children in the home, officers carelessly threw a flashbang grenade into the home. The grenade blew apart the family’s living room door, shattered windows, and hit the 10-year-old boy, who was sleeping on the sofa, with shrapnel.
The explosion occurred with such force that it tore holes in the interior and exterior walls of the family’s trailer, according to the lawsuit.

“Screaming and crying, [the boy] was bleeding profusely, was in terrible pain, feared for his life, and was emotionally traumatized by the explosion,” the complaint says.

After they were also terrorized and traumatized by blast, the 9 and 12-year-old were ordered to leave the trailer by the agents and were injured as they walked barefoot through the broken glass, according to the suit.
FBI agents failed to mention in their application for a no-knock warrant that children lived in the home, and that grenades were to be used, the complaint says.

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