Reidsville police bang on wrong door

REIDSVILLE — Etta Marcellus has this ritual. Every morning you can find her reading the newspaper and eating her breakfast in her house on Washington Street.

So it was on Monday morning — until about 9 a.m.

“I thought I heard my doorbell,” she said. But the buzzer doesn’t always work. So, she waited for another ring. She recently had knee surgery and didn’t want to get up if she didn’t have to.

As soon as she heard the second ring, the 70-plus-year-old, retired fifth-grade school teacher started her slow walk to her front door.

But she wasn’t moving fast enough for the Reidsville police, who had arrived at her home, guns drawn, dressed in riot gear and a dog in tow.

After the second ring, they began pounding on the front door.

“When I looked out, I saw seven police cars,” she said. “When I stepped out on the porch, they aimed those big weapons right at me.”

The grandmother of two had no idea why the police were at her home. But before they could say anything, she said: “You have the wrong house.”

The officers were at Marcellus’ home looking for Timothy “T.T.” Thaxton, 20, of Reidsville. He was wanted in connection with a drive-by shooting Saturday night that left a 15-year-old boy with a gunshot wound to the left side of his chest.

“They asked me, 'Does T.T live here?’

I said, 'No.’

They asked me, 'Do you know T.T?’

I said, 'No.’ ”

At that point, the officers scanned Marcellus’ living room, lowered their weapons and left.

So, how did the mistake happen?

“We received what we thought was credible information that he would be at that address,” police Capt. Guilio Dattero said.

“We are looking into it administratively to see what happened, if we had the wrong address or if we went to the house across the street. We made a mistake and we are sorry about that,” he said.

Marcellus has lived in her home alone for three years since her husband, the Rev. Cecil Marcellus, was confined to a nursing home with Alzheimer’s disease.

The couple are longtime residents of Reidsville. The Rev. Marcellus is a former mayor pro tem on the Reidsville City Council. Both Marcellus Street and the Marcellus Street Apartments are named in his honor.

“I felt so violated,” said Etta Marcellus, who said her only brush with the law has been a few parking tickets. “What if I hadn’t been home? I think they would have come in here and busted up the place looking for “T.T.”

“This guy has caused a lot of stress in my life, and I don’t know who he is,” she said. “I don’t know anything about him.”

Thaxton turned himself in to police the next day. He was held in the Rockingham County Jail under a $500,000 bond on charges of attempted first-degree murder and shooting into an occupied property.

Reidsville police Capt. William Hairston, who Marcellus has known for a number of years, took a hand written letter of apology to Marcellus’ home Thursday. Dattero also went by to apologize to her.

Abso-FRIGGIN-hilarious! I wake up, log on to FR and find a story about 5-O in my little town! :)

Look, I can add a LOT of insight here. First, the Reidsville poeleese wouldn't have "busted down" her door because, well, let's just say that isn't their "style". They would have knocked, then knocked again, then knocked some more. After a few minutes, they would have gone for coffee and donuts, come back and knocked some more.

Seriously, this police force isn't exactly LA's. Some good folks work on the force, but , for the most part, they aren't going to go half cocked into a person's house. You'd have a harder time getting them to actually investigate something!

We have had several break-in's of vehicles and storage buildings in my neighborhood in the last 6 months. One neighbor two doors downa has had his place hit 3 times now, with the last one the worst. They didn't get anything, but unscrewed the light bulbs in 2 of his motion detectors (one under his car port, but both too close to the ground) and took a hacksaw to the lock on his storage building - WHILE WE WERE ALL HOME! Well, 5-O comes out and does.... NOTHING! No finger printing (I know they are difficult), not real searching of the premises, NOTHING. The tell him "well, nothing was stolen, so just go get another lock."

I am waiting for the day when they try to hit us again and I fill the bastards full of lead. Of course, then I will probably be arrested, but at least there won't be any more break-ins by that dude!

So, I doubt this lady had much to worry about. I am sure it was scary for her, but she was not in any danger. They believed her when seh said he wasn't there and didn't ramsack her house, so there really isn't a story. Now, had they actually caught someone who had broken the law, THAT wold be a story!

I guess I should have added that had these break ins occured around the corner from my house (where the mayor and 1/2 of the city council lives), they would have called inthe SBI and forensic teams from Las Vegas to handle it. Since it didn't, it wasn't worth their time. Seriously, I have seen it happen before.

A few years ago those folks got brand new sidewalks poured, complete with nice new driveway cuts in the curbs, from one end to the next. Of course, they had also done this just 5 years prior to that, but there was now grass growing up in spots, and we can't have our Mayor's sidewalk looking like that!

We had been trying to get just the curbs replaced on our street for over 10 years because the concrete was literally falling off. They came in and replace SOME of our curbing, patched others and completely ignore most of it. Last summer.

Well, at least the police acted with some restraint. In some jurisdictions if the police did not go in with guns blazing the police would have at least thrown the old woman to the floor and kept her there for hours demanding information while they ransacked the (wrong) house. This type of thing started with the war on drugs and really accellerated under the Clinton/Reno reign of "gun safety" where ordinary citizens are cut down in a hail of bullets during no-knock raids on the wrong house. I think the real goal is to make citizens frightened of the government rather than to "get tough" on criminals. Instead of to "serve and protect" we have "search and destroy."

I usually take the cops' side in these things, because I've been there and know how things happen, and can happen.

The tip the cops had obviously was a little slim. But the guy was badly wanted, and they had to check it out. They went to the house, knocked on the door, waited, knocked louder (pounded), and, being "loaded for bear", because the fugitive used a gun in the crime, had their guns drawn when the door opened.

They apologized and left because they knew the tip was sketchy, and not enough to justify further investigation at that house.

That's just police work, folks. Not asking you to like it, but they did it right.

I was involved in an investigation very similar to this one. It happened in Omaha, during the Black Panther movement there, in the mid-60's.

A call had come to the PD reporting a woman screaming at a certain address. About four officers responded right away, looked around the house, which was abandoned and empty, and were leaving, when the last cop noticed a briefcase sitting upright on the frontroom floor. They had walked past it, looking for anyone in trouble.

He picked up the briefcase, and it was wired to the floor, the act of lifting it causing the bomb to explode, killing the officer, and injuring the next-to-last officer, blowing him through the open front door to the yard outside.

You can't imagine the intensity of the investigation. The cops did a beautiful job, finding a piece of wire at the site and later matching it with a tool at the place where the bomb was built. Lots of tips, Black Panthers were behind it, but they sent a 15-year-old boy in to plant the bomb.

The kid's parents were hostile to the police, but he wasn't at home. He was hiding. One night soon after, another youth called (I just happened to get the call), and said he knew where the bomber was hiding.

He went in my car with me, and I could tell by the way he was answering my questions, etc, that he definitely had the right information.

We drove up and down the street, and he wasn't exactly sure which house it was, because he had only been to the back side, where the bomber was sleeping on the back porch.

He pointed out the house, and the raid party went in, roused the residents, searched the house from top to bottom, did not find the bomber. The residents were furious, and the raid leader, a Captain, threw up his hands and said, "I'm done with this."

I told him, "Cap, this guy is serious, and the bomber is right here under our noses. Don't call off the investigation yet." He calmed down some, and the informant said he could positively identify the house from the back. So we walked down a driveway, where the back sides of houses could be seen in both directions. As it happened, the driveway we walked down was the right house, just a door away from the wrong house.

Actually, the informant walked right up to the screened porch and called to his friend, the bomber, and told him the cops were here. He said "okay" and got up from his bed, and the cops took him into custody.

Yes, the wrong house was raided. Yes, the people were furious. Yes, the bad guy was caught.

We all thought it was a good night's work.

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