Trina Martin, her son Gabe, and ex-partner Toi Cliatt were the victims of an FBI raid in the predawn hours of October 2017. As they slept, FBI agents burst through the front door of their home and let off a flash grenade. A terrified Martin pleaded to get her son but was told to “shut up,” according to USA Today. Gabe, who was only 7 years old, held his hands up in fear as agents entered his room.
The incident lasted only five minutes before the agents realized they were in the wrong home after they asked Cliatt to repeat the address. They then left without an explanation to pursue their target four doors down. They came back to apologize only after completing their mission, according to The Independent.
Martin told AP News that the raid left them traumatized. “We’ll never be the same, mentally, emotionally, psychologically… Mentally you can suppress it, but you can’t really get over it.”
Martin’s son, Gabe, became so anxious after the raid that he started to pull threads out of his clothes and peel paint off of the walls.
It has been eight years since the mistaken raid, and the family is still fighting to get their foot through the court doors. They first sued the agents under the Federal Tort Claims Act in 2019. The FTCA is a federal law that removes immunity and allows individuals to sue for “assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest abuse of process or malicious prosecution,” per USA Today.
However, the suit was thrown out by The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022 after judges agreed that Martin cannot sue over an honest mistake, according to SFGate. But on Tuesday, it looked like Supreme Court justices were more sympathetic to the victims.
Per The Washington Post, conservative Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor were not convinced the raid was a “reasonable mistake” in the way the government’s attorney suggested. Other Justices were wary of using the case to clarify when federal agents can be held accountable for mistakes.
Source: FBI Raided The Wrong Atlanta Home And Now Messed Around and Found out
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