A 78-Year-Old Grandmother Awarded $3.76 Million After A SWAT Team Wrongfully Searched Her House

A 78-Year-Old Grandmother Awarded Almost $4 Million After A SWAT Team Wrongfully Searched Her House

A 78-year-old grandmother just scored a huge win in court after a jury granted her almost $4 million in damages after a SWAT team mistakenly searched her house while looking for a suspect.

According to USA Today, back in 2022, Ruby Johnson’s Denver home of 43 years was unlawfully searched by a SWAT team who claimed a suspect on the run was inside her home. The team claimed they pinged a stolen truck with multiple assault rifles inside to Miss Ruby’s address using Apple’s Find My.

When they arrived at the location, they forced Miss Ruby to come outside with her hands up. The woman had just gotten out of the shower and only had on her robe and a bonnet. She was greeted by marked police vehicles along her street and SWAT officers in full military gear armed with tactical rifles with a K9 German Shepherd right outside her front door.

A 78-year-old grandmother is awarded almost $4 million after a SWAT team wrongfully searched her house while looking for a suspect.

Forced her to come outside fresh out of the shower with her bonnet on! pic.twitter.com/3upvG9leWh

— Peter Dredd (@PeterDredd) March 9, 2024

She was then placed in a marked car while the team raided her house and storage unit. Once they didn’t find what they were looking for, they left, leaving Miss Ruby traumatized.

“Not only was her privacy violated, and invaluable possessions destroyed, but her sense of safety in her own home was ripped away, forcing her to move from the place where she had set her roots and built community in for 40 years,” ACLU of Colorado Executive Director Deborah Richardson said in a statement.

Through the ACLU, Miss Ruby filed a lawsuit against Denver Police’s Det. Gary Staab and Sgt. Gregory Buschy for wrongly obtaining the search warrant and wrongly approving it. The Colorado Constitution requires that search warrants be based on probable cause supported by a written affidavit before police can invade the privacy of someone’s home.

Because Apple’s “Find My” app only provides a general location of where the iPhone could have been, the jury decided that police did not have probable cause to search Miss Ruby’s home. Due to their negligence, she was awarded $3.76 million!