CLEVELAND, Tenn. (WDEF) – The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is investigating and has been since Wednesday when it happened.
The TBI was one of the first agencies to reach out to the family after the situation happened.
Attorney General Stephen Crump requested that TBI Agents are investigating the actions of law enforcement officers from the Bradley County Sheriff’s Office while executing a warrant earlier this week.
Preliminary information indicates the deputies appear to have initially entered the wrong home.
Our investigation remains active and ongoing at this time.
Previous story: A family in Cleveland says that Bradley County SWAT kicked in their door looking for the murder suspect.
“I have four kids. I have two twins that are six months old and they are baby swings in the living room, there’s kids toys all over the place they probably had to step over kids toys and they still through three different flash bangs, one hit my son’s room.”
The DEA is apologizing for bursting into the Renck family home with the Bradley County SWAT Team only finding out after the handcuffed the wrong person.
Renck says, “I thought someone is breaking into my house. I go get my gun. Trying to take my protect my family like any Dad would do.”
The father of 4 says, just before 6 am with his gun drawn he feared for his life when he saw police instead of the intruder that he was anticipating.
“As soon as they open the door I turned around, seen all those guns to pointed at me. I just turned around, because like everybody was saying if I was five steps or three steps up [the stairs], they would’ve pulled the trigger. I had gun and they think I’m a murder suspect” because “that’s what police are trained to do.”
A murder suspect wanted in connection with this woman from Johnson City, Tennessee.
The family says they were left with a smoke filled house, damage to their door, but more importantly the family says their son was temporarily blinded and deaf from the flash bang grenade and his parents say he’s traumatized.
“I might have to come upstairs, to sleep with him, so he feels safe in his own house to go to sleep because somebody didn’t do their jobs correctly.”
Renck explained how SWAT explained the mix up.
“The houses look similar really ‘well it looks similar and we were told it had a white car.’ I had a Yukon and a Camry. And they said ‘you had white car so we just got your house It looked similar.'”
Renck believe, “You could have shot me and killed me and my kids would have to go without a dad and my wife and would have to deal with how she doesn’t have any money because I’m the sole provider.”
He says his son is “worried about how he’s going to sleep at night and he’s wondering if he’s going to have nightmares when he had guns drawn in his room, waking up to a big bang.”
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