FAMILY FILES LAWSUIT ALLEGING POLICE RAIDED THE WRONG HOUSE

An after-midnight, no-knock drug raid that ended with a 46-year-old Osawatomie man being shot to death in his bedroom was based on faulty information and occurred at the wrong house, a lawsuit filed by his family alleges.

Willie Heard Sr.  was shot to death at 1:25 a.m.  on Feb.  13, 1999, in front of his wife and 16-year-old daughter 11 seconds after sheriff's officers and police detonated what was described as a "flash-bang" device and crashed through the front door of the home.

Heard was holding a rifle, authorities said.  It turned out to be unloaded.

The daughter, Ashley Heard, had run screaming for her father as authorities broke in.  After the shooting, Ashley and her mother, Linda Heard, were arrested and taken to police headquarters, according to the complaint, which was filed Friday in U.S.  District Court in Kansas City, Kan.  Ashley and Linda Heard were never charged .

The raid -- but not the shooting -- was captured on a law enforcement videotape.

After being shot once in the chest, "Heard's voice is heard on the videotape asking for help and protesting his innocence of any wrongdoing," the complaint says.  He died a short time later.

The complaint alleges that the officers did not announce themselves or order Heard to drop the rifle before shooting him.

After an investigation by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Miami County Attorney David Miller ruled that the officers who participated in the raid had not committed any crimes.  No disciplinary action was taken against the officers.

The plaintiffs are Ashley and Linda Heard; Willie Heard Jr., a son; Deandra Heard, who is not otherwise identified; and H.  Reed Walker, administrator of the estate.  They are seeking unspecified actual and compensatory damages.

Their lawyer, John Kurtz, could not be reached.

Twenty-six officers from the Miami County Sheriff's Department and the Paola and Osawatomie police departments participated in the raid, the complaint says.  The officers, it says, gave a judge false and misleading information to obtain a warrant to search for cocaine.  The warrant did not authorize a no-knock entry, and no cocaine was found, the plaintiffs allege.

The complaint quotes a police report as saying that a "trace amount of green vegetation residue," presumably marijuana, was found but not collected because there wasn't enough to test.

The search was based on information that was contradictory and never thoroughly checked out, the complaint says.  That information included allegations that police had seen drug sales on the street near the Heard house.  Authorities suspected that a relative of Heard who lived in the same block was selling drugs, the suit says.

An Osawatomie police officer, who claimed he had been in the house where drugs were sold, drew the floor plan for the raid, but it turned out to be the floor plan of another house, the complaint says.

The Miami County Board of Commissioners, the sheriff and the cities of Osawatomie and Paola and their police chiefs were named as defendants for failing to properly train and supervise officers who conducted the operation.  Six individual officers who participated also were named as defendants.

Heard had been an employee of a graphics firm for nine years before his death.  The survivors no longer live in the Osawatomie area.

Heard had two convictions in Miami County -- one in 1972 for stealing cigarettes worth less than $50 and one for a marijuana charge in 1991.