Officers of the Hanahan Police Department searching for one of three suspects in the fatal shooting of a man in a local bar raided the wrong apartment Sunday morning.
The officers had obtained a search warrant for the apartment, occupied by Tina Williams and her children, after a witness told them that the suspect lived there.
Lt. Michael Fowler of the Hanahan PD apologized to the Williams family earlier this week. "We hit the door fully expecting an armed murder suspect on the other side," Fowler told the Charleston Post and Courier.
Tina Williams told the newspaper that the incident has traumatized her family. "I didn't care about me, but they treated my kids like dogs," she said. "What if one of those guns had gone off?"
Fowler told the newspaper that members of his raid team were armed and displaying their weapons, but they did not point them at the children or their mother.
"We're embarrassed about it," Fowler said. "Obviously we made a mistake. But we owe it to the victim and the victim's family to approach it like a murder suspect was inside. I'm not going to apologize for trying to catch a murder suspect."
