From [HERE] A wrongful-death suit alleging police malfeasance during a SWAT Team operation two years ago lays out a sequence of events that explicitly contradicts the official narrative.

The key to proving it could rest with home surveillance footage that police seized that day, according to plaintiffs’ lawyer Christine Hernandez.

“It was all caught on video,” she told FOX10 News. “And they have refused to turn any of that back over to the family. And I think that would dispute, factually, what has been said by the officers at that time.”

The federal lawsuit, filed last week, names the city and Lawrence Battiste, who was police chief at the time, and seeks “in excess” of $5 million. It alleges that police arrived at a house on Lakeview Drive East before sunrise on Feb. 4, 2021, and entered the residence without knocking and identifying themselves. Police were at the home to arrest brothers Treyh and Tyhrie Webster on witness intimidation charges.

What ensued, according to police, was a shootout that resulted in 18-year-old Treyh Webster’s death.

Battiste, who now is public safety director, said at the time that police announced their presence before entering.

“The subject continued to fire shots at law enforcement officers and subsequently the SWAT team engaged the subject that was firing at them.,” he said then. “And as a result of them engaging him, he was, he was killed on scene.”

Hernandez disputed that: “That’s not accurate. No one came out firing at the police.”

The family was on edge, according to the civil complaint, because the home had been riddled with gunfire on at least two separate occasions. The complaint states that a family member was sleeping on the couch with an AR-15 rifle and pointed it at the incoming officers but did not fire.

When he realized they were officers, he shouted, “12, 12, 12,” to signal others in the house that it was police. That matches what Battiste said at the time.

But the official account and the narrative in the civil suit diverge from there. The suit alleges that police assaulted Tyhrie Webster while he was in his bed, half asleep. His mother, Georgette Sons, took a gunshot to the foot. The civil complaint alleges the bullet came from police, but police said at the time that Treyh Webster accidentally shot his mother.

Hernandez said police took not only the footage from the home surveillance system, but all of the equipment. She said it has video and, presumably, audio that could explain what happened. She said the city has refused requests to return the system and the footage and has not offered an explanation for why it has refused.

“The fact that they took that hard drive with the surveillance video and refused to turn it over – draw whatever conclusion you want to draw from that,” she said.

The purpose of the raid was to arrest the Webster brothers on charges that they tried to pressure the victim of a robbery by Treyh Webster to “drop the charges.” Prosecutors, ultimately, asked a judge to dismiss the witness intimidation charge against Tyhre Webster, although he did plead guilty to an unrelated charge of shooting into an occupied vehicle.