Press

This article appeared in the Bucks County Herald on May 21, 2026, written by Peg Quann. Click here to read it on the Bucks County Herald site.

A Lower Makefield family is suing the township, its former police chief, individual officers, and the federal government two years after an alleged incident in which they say gun-wielding officers barged into their home, intent on capturing a wanted person. The officers had identified the wrong house for the raid, the suit states.

The officers allegedly banged on the front door of the Morgan Drive home of Robert and Christine McLaughlin and their two children at 4:30 a.m. on May 16, 2024, and then used a battering ram to force it open. They then entered the home with assault-style rifles drawn.

When the banging on the door began, Robert McLaughlin “immediately sprang out of bed, not even taking the time to get dressed” and went downstairs to investigate. He repeatedly shouted toward the front door in an attempt to scare off the intruders, but the blows to the door continued. After being hit by the battering ram, the complaint alleges the door splintered and was breached.

“Mr. McLaughlin was immediately met with blinding bright lights and assault rifles. The home invaders then launched at Mr. McLaughlin, physically binding him and forcefully pulling him from his home,” the suit avers. The officers revealed themselves, being “adorned in full tactical gear and pointing their assault rifles directly at Mr. McLaughlin,” who was forced into handcuffs and physically restrained while still undressed.

The officers then, at gunpoint, forced Christine, and the two children out of the home, also in pajamas and underwear, where they observed their husband and father being detained and surrounded by police, the complaint states.

Neighbors came out of their homes and observed the McLaughlins surrounded by heavily armed officers, the suit states.

“The allegations in this complaint describe every family’s worst nightmare,” said Brian Fritz, partner at Fritz & Bianculli Law Firm that filed the suit May 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Besides the township, former police Chief Kenneth Coluzzi and unnamed officers belonging to both the township department and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) were listed in the complaint.

The McLaughlins repeatedly identified themselves but the family continued to be detained until a superior officer acknowledged that law enforcement had entered the wrong residence, stated a press announcement about the suit.

The suit avers that the Lower Makefield Township Police Department and DEA agents were attempting to execute a warrant for a different individual at a neighboring property but instead targeted the McLaughlin home.

The lawsuit alleges that the family’s Fourth Amendment rights against unwarranted searches and seizures were violated. The law firm states that there was “unlawful detention, false imprisonment, assault, battery, negligence, invasion of privacy, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and failures involving police training, supervision and warrant execution procedures.”

The family also experienced “severe emotional and psychological trauma following the wrong-house raid,” the law firm added.

Reached at her office, Lower Makefield Solicitor Maureen Burke Carlton said, “We have no comment on pending litigation.”

Neither former Lower Makefield Police Chief Coluzzi nor a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, listed as the federal defendant, could be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.