Gerry Thompson

A front gate was ripped off the house by state police after a raid at Gerald Thompson's home in South Hanover Twp. Friday June 1, 2012. CHRIS KNIGHT, The Patriot-News

Michelle Thompson tells a horror story in a lawsuit she has filed in Dauphin County Court more than a year after a heavily-armed state police Special Emergency Response Team raided her Hummelstown-area home.

The police aren't the heroes of her account.

They are the villains, destructive ones at that.

There is no doubt that the SERT team left Thompson's Handshue Drive house in ruins after the May 2012 raid. The physical evidence was there after the team, which was searching for Thompson's estranged husband, Gerald, packed up and left empty-handed.

At issue in Thompson's lawsuit is the matter of justification.

Thompson claims police had no reason to attack her house, blast it full of holes, ram it with an armored vehicle and fill it with noxious gas, especially since she had readily agreed to allow officers to enter the home and look for Gerry.

She even left the front door open. And she contends that police should have realized that Gerry - who was being sought on solicitation to perjury, obstruction of law and witness intimidation charges - wasn't at the house because his lawyer, Roger Laguna, had told them that her husband was in Maryland.

Laguna, a former police officer, said Wednesday that he's still appalled by what happened. It was just gratuitous, unnecessary destruction, he said.

"As a cop I participated in many searches. I've kicked many doors open," he said. "But that was nothing like this."

Gerald Thompson, stands next to some of the spent ordinance left behind by the state police after a raid at his home in South Hanover Twp. Friday June 1, 2012. CHRIS KNIGHT, The Patriot-News

She claims that after the raid her husband, accompanied by Laguna, did turn himself in at the local district judge's office. Gerald Thompson was granted unsecured bail, then walked out of the office "and went back to what was left of his home," the suit states.

First Assistant District Attorney Fran Chardo said the witnesses intimidation charge and other counts that prompted the raid were withdrawn as part of a plea agreement reached when Gerald Thompson pleaded guilty last August to a weapons possession charge that had been filed in December 2011. Thompson was sentenced to 11 1/2 to 23 months in county prison on his guilty plea.

In her suit, Michelle Thompson seeks more than $100,000 in damages on claims of negligent use of a motor vehicle to cause property damage, assault and battery, false arrest, invasion of privacy, and civil rights violations.

Laguna said the damage caused by police and the noxious, irritating gas residue they left behind persists and has made the Thompson home uninhabitable.

The house has been foreclosed upon, he said, and the mother and son are living in a garage apartment on the property. He said a restoration firm told Thompson it would cost $70,000 just to repair the exterior damage, and that the gas-polluted interior would have to be gutted.

"They can't afford to fix it. Insurance wouldn't cover it," Laguna said. "I guess the state police will have to cover it."