Owner
of house blown apart by SWAT says: 'This is an abomination. This is
an atrocity'
rTV6,
6
June, 2015
GREENWOOD
VILLAGE, Colo. - "There was one gunman with a handgun and they
chose to turn this house into something that resembles Osama Bin
Laden's compound."
Leo
Lech is more than a little upset, and he is not afraid to express it
with colorful language.
After
all, the house he purchased for his son now has gaping holes where it
once had walls and windows. Past the exposed studs and insulation of
the condemned structure, you can see artwork on the wall of a
9-year-old boy's bedroom.
"In
any civilized nation ... this is the act of paramilitary thugs,"
he says he told the chief of the Greenwood Village Police Department.
The
chief, Lech said, brushed it off.
The
damage was inflicted by police and SWAT officers who were working to
capture Robert Jonathan Seacat, a suspected 33-year-old
shoplifter who allegedly barged into a random home Wednesday
afternoon, and opened fire on police when they tried to arrest him a
short time later.
The
incident began Wednesday afternoon, when he was allegedly spotted
shoplifting in Aurora. Seacat then drove to a nearby light rail
station, where he ditched his car and ran.
Eventually,
he ran into Lech's house on South Alton Street in Greenwood Village,
where the 9-year-old boy was inside. Police dispatchers and the
child's mother, who is engaged to Lech's son, talked the child out of
the house.
The
boy was unhurt, but the standoff was just beginning.
Seacat
wasn't taken into custody until Thursday morning. The SWAT team said
it used chemical agents, flash-bang grenades and a "breaching
ram" to end the nearly 20-hour standoff.
"There
was obviously some kind of explosive that was fired into here,"
Lech said, showing 7NEWS anchor Anne Trujillo the cavernous hole in
the wall that used to protect the boy's bedroom.
Those
holes are visible in nearly every room on the second floor.
A
neighbor, who says the SWAT team used his home as a base of
operations, points out that whatever the police used to blast the
holes sent debris flying.
"When
they used the explosives to blow apart the side of this house here,
they broke our windshield," the neighbor said.
"There
are holes just like this one all through the back of the house too,"
Lech said. "They methodically fired explosives into every room
in this house in order to extract one person. Granted, he had a
handgun, but against 100 officers? You know, the proper thing to do
would be to evacuate these homes around here, ensure the safety of
the homeowners around here, fire some tear gas through the windows.
If that didn’t work, you have 50 SWAT officers with body armor
break down the door."
Lech
estimated roughly that his plan would have caused $10,000 in damage,
as opposed to the $250,000 in damage he believes he is facing.
"This
is an abomination," he said. "This is an atrocity. To use
this kind of force against one gunman."
Lech
explains that he had owned the home for two years and rented it to
his son. It is now uninhabitable and may need to be completely
leveled.
His
insurance will pay for the structure, but Lech's son did not have
rental insurance and the possessions inside are therefore not being
covered.
"There
was an engagement ring in there that would have been John's
great-great grandmother's. It survived two World Wars, OK, but it
didn’t survive the American police paramilitary operation."
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