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McLaughlin Family Alleges Federal Agents and Police Executed Wrong-Address Raid, Held Family at Gunpoint During Early-Morning Warrant Operation

The wrong-house raid involving the McLaughlin family was covered in this article that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on May 15, 2026, written by Vinny Vella. Click here to read it on the inquirer.com site.

Lower Makefield cops raided the wrong house while looking for a drug dealer, lawsuit says. The person they wanted lived next door.

The McLaughlin family says officers from Lower Makefield Police working withDEA agents detained them on their front lawn until a supervisor acknowledged the mistake.

Richard McLaughlin said he woke up at 4:30 a.m. one morning in May 2024 to the sound of someone banging at his front door in Yardley.

When he went to investigate, the sound only grew louder. And before McLaughlin could react, his door was knocked down by heavily armed police officers, who handcuffed him, his wife, and his two children and pulled the family onto their front lawn. 

The officers, from Lower Makefield Police and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, were serving a search warrant related to an investigation into a multi state drug ring.

But, according to a federal civil-rights lawsuit filed Thursdayby theMcLaughlins’attorneys, they were off by one house.

Now, the McLaughlin family is suing both agencies, saying their mistake violated their Fourth Amendment rights, caused them undue suffering, and highlights significant deficiencies in how officers are trained to carry out these search warrants.

“This is something that simply should not happen, and when you think about it, what’s preventing this from happening to any of us?” said Brian Fritz, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the family.

“For all of us, it’s rattling to hear this story of the McLaughlins,” he said. “How can a local pizza guy do better [at finding an address] than Lower Makefield and theDEA, with a combined budget of over a million dollars?”

Lower Makefield solicitor Maureen Burke Carlton declined to comment Friday on the pending litigation. A spokesperson for the DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The raid was targeting Jose Correa, who lived next door to the McLaughlins at the time, according to court filings.

Days after the officers knocked down the wrong door, Correa was arrested andc harged with conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, heroin, fentanyl, and cocaine. Federal prosecutors say Correa was a member of a New Jersey-based drug ring that spread the drugs under the orders of the Latin Kings street gang.

Correa’s trial is pending in federal court in Newark.

In the lawsuit, Fritz wrote that McLaughlin, his wife, Christine, their son, John, and their daughter, a minor, were handcuffed on their front lawn, still wearing their pajamas as officers searched their home.

The family repeatedly identified themselves and told the officers that they had targeted the wrong house, the lawsuit said. But it wasn’t until a supervisor arrived at the scene and acknowledged the mistake that the family was released. 

Fritz said a Lower Makefield official later offered to cover the expense of repairing their shattered front door. Other than that, he said, neither agency has apologized for an incident that Fritz described as “absolutely unimaginable.”

“This should not happen, and there should be policies and procedures in place so you don’t execute a warrant where you’re not intruding in someone’s home and placing them under sheer fright,” Fritz said. “And you’re also placing law enforcement officers’ lives in risk if people in the home had decided to defend themselves, which they would’ve been in their right to do.”

Correction: This story has been update to correct a misspelling of Brian Fritz’s name. 

If you believe your civil rights were violated during a police raid or search, Fritz & Bianculli’s civil rights attorneys may be able to help. Contact us