Thread: Stun Grenade Lands in Baby Crib During SWAT Raid

Mother pens emotive plea after her 18-month-old son suffered horrific burns when a military-style raid by Georgia police went horribly wrong

IT was 3am. Mum and dad were in one bed. Three little girls were in another. An 18-month-old baby was in his cot nearby. Then black-clad men suddenly burst into the room.
There was a deafening roar, a whoosh of air and a blinding flash of light.
Armed Georgia PD SWAT officers stormed into the room, pinning the husband to the ground and handcuffing him. Mum and daughters were shoved into a corner.

Shouting. Screaming.
Smoke.

“I kept asking the officers to let me have my baby, but they said shut up and sit down,” Alecia Phonesavanh says in an emotive online post published yesterday.

Crying.

Something was wrong.

“I heard my baby wailing and asked one of the officers to let me hold him. He screamed at me to sit down and shut up and blocked my view, so I couldn’t see my son,” Alicia details in her post at Salon.com.


Left critically injured by grenade blast.

“I could see a singed crib. And I could see a pool of blood. The officers yelled at me to calm down and told me my son was fine, that he’d just lost a tooth.”

The mother of four gives a harrowing account of what she saw when she finally got to see her son in a hospital in the city of Cornelia, Georgia, late last month.

“It was only hours later when they finally let us drive to the hospital that we found out Bou Bou was in the intensive burn unit and that he’d been placed into a medically induced coma.”

The family had only been staying at her sister-in-law’s house as their own Wisconsin house had burnt down a few weeks earlier.

His wounds were horrific.

“There’s still a hole in his chest that exposes his ribs,” she said. “At least that’s what I’ve been told; I’m afraid to look.”

She says her baby — whose real name is Bounkham — paid the price of guilt by association.

“My husband’s nephew, the one they were looking for, wasn’t there. He doesn’t even live in that house,” she wrote on Salon.

“After the SWAT team broke down the door, they threw a flashbang grenade inside. It landed in my son’s crib.

“After … throwing my husband to the ground, and screaming at my children, the officers — armed with M16s — filed through the house like they were playing war. They searched for drugs and never found any.”

For the past three weeks, Alicia and her husband have been sleeping at the hospital alongside their critically injured son. Since her post, baby Bou Bou has been taken out of his induced coma and transferred to another hospital. His critical wounds are yet to heal.

“Every morning, I have to face the reality that my son is fighting for his life. It’s not clear whether he’ll live or die. All of this to find a small amount of drugs?”

The SWAT team used tactics usually reserved for use by military forces in urban battlefields — throwing explosives called “flash-bangs” to overwhelm the senses of people in a confined space before troops storm a building.
The north-east Georgia SWAT team have expressed their dismay at the child’s injuries.

The police officers involved have been called baby killers and received threats following the incident, Sheriff Joey Terrell said.

“All I can say is pray for the baby, his family and for us,” he told CNN.

The Sheriff says the raid followed a confidential tip-off that methamphetamines had been purchased from men only hours earlier at the house the family was staying at. A review was being conducted into the raid, he said.

The nephew, Thonetheva, was later arrested at a different location and now faces drug distribution charges.

Alicia points out that her family is not the only victim of increasingly militarised police raids over minor charges. Her story is but one in a growing list being compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union. Their report, War Comes Home, details 818 such incidents in the United States.

“Now my kids don’t want to go to sleep at night because they’re afraid the cops will kill them or their family. It’s time to remind the cops that they should be serving and protecting our neighbourhoods, not waging war on the people in them.”

Mother pens emotive plea after her 18-month-old son suffered horrific burns when a military-style raid by Georgia police went horribly wrong | News.com.au

Switzerland right?

Originally Posted by Albert Shagnastier

Switzerland right?

Yeah. My first thought was Lichtenstein.

No, I'm pretty sure Georgia is in the Maldives

1-2-3-4. Bust down the goddamned door!

"A review was being conducted into the raid, he said."

"It'll probably recommend we don't throw grenades at babies anymore"

Absolutely horrendous.



(Georgia Swat)

I thought there was some law in the US that soldiers were not allowed to act against civilians in the country?

Well, regardless of the badge, if it looks like a horse, acts like a horse, has horsey gear on, it might have a badge on saying "I'm a donkey"..... but its a fricking Horse!

AS Pappa Davis says, mostly ex army anyway make up these teams, and go flying in to a couples bedroom with their baby but in their broken minds, they are kicking down Bin Ladens boudoir door.

America - get a grip!

Guy loading his GRENADE LAUNCHER is not wearing his SpecOps commando tactical killing gloves.
Must be a rookie.

Originally Posted by Necron99

SpecOps commando tactical killing gloves.

Maybe he likes the feel of blood on his hands whilst he is protecting and serving the people.

I think we can now confirm that America has finally gone to war against its own citizens.

What the fvck type of "police force" is that.

It's a fvcking military hit squad.

And some spastics on here think Thailand is under marshall law (shakes head).

^Was just there a couple of weeks ago. Deliverance country.

Google Atlanta Georgia SWAT Team. Some horrific stories even worse than this one. In 2010, a SWAT Team threw a flash bang into another little kid's bed, the shot and killed her when she jumped up, on fire and screaming. SWAT Teams expend 70% of their efforts breaking into homes looking for miniscule amounts of drugs.

In this case, Jim-Bob was alleged to have sold a whole $50 of meth.

similar to this is probably a nightly occurance in many countries throughout the middle east and does not make the western news

Just makes you sick, doesn't it?

Had to find out what happened to the baby. Looks like he will be alright after rehab.



The family has a lawyer and working on suing the pants off the Cornelia Police and Sheriffs department.

Originally Posted by baldrick

similar to this is probably a nightly occurance in many countries throughout the middle east and does not make the western news

Maybe - but therefore, how dare the US claim a moral high ground when they are no different?

Not for nothing, but...I am ashamed as an american to admit that I am...At 62, I realize my years are numbered and I am so happy to know that my dead body will never rest in that country.

Anger over grand jury's decision on botched US police raid that injured toddler

Atlanta: Critics in the United States have pounced on the decision of a grand jury in Georgia's Habersham County not to indict any of the officers involved in a botched drug raid that left a toddler disfigured.
"How can it not be a crime for a policeman to throw a bomb into a room that injures a baby? That's not answered," said Donald Wilkes jnr, a professor of law emeritus at the University of Georgia who reviewed the grand jury's 15-page ruling issued on Monday. "This is a shocking miscarriage of justice."

Nineteen-month-old Bounkham "Bou Bou" Phonesavanh's nose was detached from his face after a stun grenade, lobbed by a member of the Habersham SWAT team serving a no-knock warrant on a suspected drug dealer, landed in the playpen where he was sleeping.


DISFIGURED: Bounkham "Bou Bou" Phonesavanh with his parents after being injured in a police raid. Photo: Supplied

Family spokesman Marcus Coleman says the toddler's medical bills – which Habersham County won't pay – have topped $US1 million ($1.15 million) and he still faces numerous surgeries.

"This is unbelievable to me," Bounkham Phonesavanh, the boy's father, said.
"I just don't understand how or why the grand jury would not charge any of these officers for what they did to us. It hurts me to see my family suffer like this and for them to do nothing."
However, criminal charges could still be forthcoming.

In a statement released on Tuesday, US Attorney Sally Quillian-Yates said: "Federal authorities have been participating in the investigation of this terrible incident, and now that a state grand jury has declined to return an indictment, we will review the matter for possible federal charges."
The grand jury placed much of the blame for the May 28 raid on the unit that planned it: the since-disbanded Mountain Judicial Circuit Narcotics Criminal Investigation and Suppression Team.

The case agent who prepared the affidavit securing a no-knock warrant warned the Habersham SWAT team that executed it to expect armed guards, a cache of weapons and no children.
Police on the scene found no sentries or guns but would discover four children, including Bou Bou, inside the home in the raid.

"There was enough evidence for [the case agent] to resign," the Phonesavanhs' attorney, Mawuli Davis, said. "Providing misleading, false information is in fact a crime. It's a violation of her oath of office."
Mr Davis said the jurors overlooked the "reckless conduct" by the SWAT team, noting that the team passed a van parked in the driveway of the home that contained four child seats.

Georgia law defines reckless conduct as "causing bodily harm to or endanger(ing) the bodily safety of another person by consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk . . . which a reasonable person would exercise in the situation".
"If the lights were out in this room and a civilian came in and threw [firecrackers], that would be considered reckless conduct," Mr Davis said.

"They were clearly circling the wagons to protect their own," he said.
Jurors indicated that they were swayed by "the very real sadness, regret and anguish in law enforcement officers who were involved in these events".
In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Brian Rickman, the district attorney for the Mountain Judicial Circuit District, defended the grand jury's ruling and his decision to make the citizen jurors "co-investigators" who would act as a check against accusations of a cover-up.

"These are people who wanted to make sure their community was represented well," he said. "There was a lot of work put into this decision, a lot of struggle. They wanted to make very specific recommendations to prevent something like this from happening again."
The jurors' suggestions included better training, using Superior Court judges to approve no-knock warrants and, whenever possible, arresting drug suspects away from a home.
The jurors said they believed the no-knock warrant was justified in this case because the suspect, Wanis Thonetheva, was on bond for drug and gun charges.
But they did not mention that Thonetheva was arrested without incident and without a no-knock warrant later that day.


Read more: Anger over grand jury's decision on botched US police raid that injured toddler

The establishment has a history of employing dumb fooks, or marine failures to do these jobs!

Is America still the leader of freedom and democracy and the country we all want to be like?

Atlanta: Critics in the United States have pounced on the decision of a grand jury in Georgia's Habersham County not to indict any of the officers involved in a botched drug raid that left a toddler disfigured.

Bunch of fuckwits who spend every night watching Cop re-runs in their trailers no doubt.

Originally Posted by pseudolus

Originally Posted by Necron99

SpecOps commando tactical killing gloves.

Maybe he likes the feel of blood on his hands whilst he is protecting and serving the people.

The very unnecessary and highly manufactured War on Drugs.

Ain't it grand?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Atlanta: Critics in the United States have pounced on the decision of a grand jury in Georgia's Habersham County not to indict any of the officers involved in a botched drug raid that left a toddler disfigured.

Bunch of fuckwits who spend every night watching Cop re-runs in their trailers no doubt.

Everyone blames the cops, but who gave them the weapons, made the laws and told them to do it.
Who voted in the law makers, who is responsible, the government who take a hard line, for votes, the voters.

Trouble in the US, is bad guys have guns, other countries act the same, have SWAT type units, but don't come up with these situations hourly.

Do you think Mexico has bobbies on the beat, community gets the police force they deserve.