Deputies raid the home of a homicide victim’s family, seeking the man killed five months earlier

On the morning of March 25, 2022, officers looking for Travys Taylor, 28, on a warrant came to the home of his mother, Tysha Melton. Melton said the officers charged into her home wearing tactical gear, guns in hand, and pushed her into a television stand. Taylor had been killed in October 2021 after leaving a Kensington restaurant; a memorial to him stood in his bedroom. According to the suit, the public court docket had recorded his death at least as early as January 2022.

Melton’s federal lawsuit, filed in December 2023, alleged that Bilal’s staff failed to conduct a proper records search before the raid. Spokesperson Teresa Lundy contended there was no mechanism for checking, in advance of a raid, whether someone wanted on a warrant had died.