Murphy – A lawyer for a Bear Paw man injured when his house was raided by a SWAT unit in December is trying to get law enforcement to return belongings that were seized during the raid.
Jason Harley Kloepfer, represented by local lawyer Frank McKinney, asked a District Court judge to order law enforcement to return his belongings.
“There are no pending charges against him,” McKinney told Judge Tessa Sellers on June 28. “He wants his property back.”
Kloepfer was not present in court at the time. Sellers set a July 19 date for a hearing for differing sides to argue their cases.
Kloepfer was wounded on Dec. 13, 2022, when Cherokee Tribal Police SWAT team members opened fire on him at his front door as he attempted to comply with their demands for him to come outside.
Law enforcement was responding to a 911 call from a neighbor, but Kloepfer and Mahler were asleep inside when law officers arrived and were
stirred awake by a surveillance drone the SWAT team deployed. Kloepfer was holding the drone when he opened his door to surrender and was shot several times. He had been unarmed.
Kloepfer was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries from the raid and his wife, Alison Mahler, was detained. Kloepfer was initially charged with communicating threats and resisting a public officer. Mahler was released without charges.
District Attorney Ashley Welch dropped charges against Kloepfer on March 1 after he made a Facebook post of surveillance video taken during the raid. The video disproves the accusations that he resisted law enforcement commands.
Yet, more than six months after the raid and four months after charges against Kloepfer were dropped, he has been unable to reclaim property that includes clothes and a digital video recorder.
Welch recused her office from any further prosecutions related to the case and asked the state Attorney General’s Office to step in, citing “alleged misconduct by government officials.”
But according to assistant district attorney Jason Arnold, who argued to keep Kloepfer’s property at the June 28 hearing, the Attorney General’s Office has opted out of prosecuting the case. He said the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys would appoint a special prosecutor for the case, but that hasn’t yet happened.
Arnold told Sellers that it is uncertain whether the seized belongings would be needed once a special prosecutor has been appointed. Keeping the items in custody is necessary “out of the abundance of caution,” he said.
McKinney wasn’t buying it.
“They’ve had plenty of time,” he said.
McKinney’s law firm is part of Kloepfer’s legal team in a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in June against the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and its tribal police (which provided the SWAT team), and numerous members of law enforcement agencies who were present at the raid.