VIDEO: 98-Year-Old Kansas Newspaper Owner Tells Police ‘Get Out Of My House’ During Raid

 The 98-year-old co-owner of a Kansas newspaper, who died the day after police raided her home and office, is seen in newly-released surveillance footage from the raid demanding officers get out of her house.

Joan Meyer, owner of the Marion County Record, was home alone when police raided her house on August 11. Meyer can be seen in the minute-and-a-half clip shouting at the cops wearing her robe and slippers and using her walker.

“Don’t you touch any of that stuff!” Meyer shouts at the officers as they examine a desk in her living room.

“Ma’am,” one officer starts to respond. “This is my house!” Meyer interrupts him, stomping her walker on the floor.

“We’ll be out of here pretty quick,” one officer tells her.

“Does your mother love you? Do you love your mother? You’re an a**hole!” she tells an officer. “Get out of my house!”

At one point, Meyer tells Police Chief Gideon Cody to step outside the home and wait for his officers.

“How many computers do you have in the house, ma’am,” an officer asks at one point in the video.

“I’m not going to tell you. Get out of my way. I want to see what they’re doing,” Meyer says.

“Well, they’re working. You can go on through if you want,” an officer responds.

“Those are personal papers!” she tells the cops as they go through her belongings.

Meyer died the next day following the police raid on her home. Her son, Marion County Record Publisher Eric Meyer, said he believes the stress and anger she experienced due to the police raid contributed to her death.

On Tuesday, he released the video clip of the raid, which is from about an hour and a half into the two-hour raid of Meyer’s home.

The raids on Meyer’s home and the Marion County Record’s newsroom came after reporters dug into allegations that the police department had turned a blind eye to a local sweets shop owner driving with a suspended license after a DUI.

 

The police department said they believed a reporter might have committed identity theft in pulling records on the sweets shop owner, but both the newspaper and the reporter said they only accessed publicly available records.

Police seized electronic devices such as computers and phones during the raids.

Five days after the raid, the Marion County Attorney found that police had “insufficient evidence” for the raids, withdrew the warrants, and ordered all items to be returned.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is now investigating the incident.

“It is not a crime in America to be a reporter,” Bernie Rhodes, an attorney for the Meyers and their newspaper, told Fox News.

The attorney said the family is exploring all of their options, including a wrongful death lawsuit.

In 1998, Meyer and her husband bought the Marion County Record, founded in 1874, to save it from being taken over by a corporate chain. Bill Meyer worked at the paper from 1948 until he died in 2006.